2,667
edits
Difference between revisions of "Unmarried Spouses"
From Clicklaw Wikibooks
no edit summary
| Line 8: | Line 8: | ||
I. Introduction | I. Introduction | ||
(Incidentally, the law in British Columbia doesn't talk about people who are common-law spouses and never has. Once upon a time, people could marry each other and create a legal relationship simply by agreeing to marry, without getting a licence from the government or having a particular kind of ceremony. Because the rights between the spouses came from common law principles, these were known as common-law marriages. Common-law marriages were valid in England until the Marriage Act of 1753, better known by its full flowery name, An Act for the Better Preventing of Clandestine Marriage. Please don't use this term. It doesn't mean what most people think it means and is two and a half centuries out of date.) | |||
The Family Relations Act defines "spouse" as including unmarried people who have cohabited for at least two years in a marriage-like relationship as well as legally married spouses. The Family Relations Act doesn't talk about common-law relationships, just about who is a spouse and who isn't, but for our purposes qualifying as a spouse is about as good a definition of a common-law relationship as any. | The Family Relations Act defines "spouse" as including unmarried people who have cohabited for at least two years in a marriage-like relationship as well as legally married spouses. The Family Relations Act doesn't talk about common-law relationships, just about who is a spouse and who isn't, but for our purposes qualifying as a spouse is about as good a definition of a common-law relationship as any. | ||
