Difference between revisions of "Family Relationships"

Divorce is the legal termination of a marriage. A divorce requires an order of the court ending the marriage; a couple that have been separated for a dozen years are still married, and they'll remain married until they get a court order for their divorce. The rules about divorce and the process required to get a divorce order are discussed in the chapter Marriage & Divorce > Divorce.

Assuming that the parties have a valid marriage, they have entered into a new relationship with emotional, social and legal aspects. These different aspects of married life are often intertwined. For example, spouses are entitled to consort with one another and to enjoy the benefits of what are quaintly called conjugal rights; these are legally enforceable rights under the common law (well, the older common law) and, at the same time, they're also clearly emotional and social rights.

The law about marriage has changed enormously over the last three centuries, and marriage once had a much more important legal significance than it does today. Before about 1890, a married couple were legally considered to be one person. A husband took ownership of all of his wife's property on marriage and could use his wife's assets as collateral for loans. His wife, one the other hand, lost the ability to hold a bank account in her own name, sell her property without her husband's consent, or start a law suit or run a business in her own name. Women who hadn't married, on the other hand, could own property in their own names, have bank accounts, sue and be sued, and run a business.

The institution of marriage was once of such social significance that people could be sued for attempting to interfere with a married couple's relationship. Until 1972, it was a civil offence to falsely boast that you were married to someone (called "jactitation of marriage") or to lure a spouse away from a married relationship (called "criminal conversation"), and a law suit could be brought against someone for loss of the benefits of marriage ("loss of consortium").

All of these old rules are now extinguished in British Columbia and married couples are no longer considered to be one person, with the husband having sovereign rights over his wife and her property. Since 1978, married women have had exactly the same property rights that unmarried women have, which are also happen to be the same property rights that their husbands have. A husband can no longer apply for credit in his wife's name or use her property as collateral for a loan without her express permission.

At law, the most significant difference between married and unmarried relationships lies in the consequences of the end of those relationships. There are fairly strict rules that limit the eligibility of common-law couples for spousal support, for example, and only married couples have the benefit of the rules about the division of property set out in the provincial Family Relations Act.

If one or more of the requirements of a valid marriage are lacking, the marriage may be annulled or cancelled. To obtain an annulment, one of the parties must make an application for declaration that the marriage is void. A marriage may be annulled if:

More information about void marriages, voidable marriages and annullment is available in the chapter Marriage & Divorce > Marriage.

Separation is simple: the parties must simply start living "separate and apart" from one another, whether under the same roof or in separate homes. Contrary to popular opinion, you do not need to see a lawyer or file some sort of court document to obtain a separation. You just need to call it quits and tell the other spouse that it's over.

For married couples, separation signals the breakdown of their relationship but does not release them from the bonds of their marriage. For unmarried couples, including common-law couples, separation is all that's required to end the relationship.

Divorce is the legal dissolution of a valid marriage. To obtain a divorce, one spouse must sue the other in the Supreme Court of British Columbia, and at least one of the spouses must have been "ordinarily resident" in British Columbia for the preceeding year. In order to qualify for a divorce order, the application must be based on one of three grounds:

The one exception to this last rule has to do with the "consumation" of the marriage, and this exception doesn't mean what most people think it means. A marriage does not need to be consumated to be a valid, binding marriage. In order to escape a marriage on this ground, you or your partner must, I kid you not, have an "invincible repugnance" to the act of sexual intercourse or some physicial condition which makes sex impossible.

==unmarried==