Family Relationships

People in virtually any kind of relationship can find themselves having a problem involving family law. Some people are married, others have lived together long enough to qualify as spouses without being married, others are in shorter relationships, perhaps lasting for only one night, which produce children. Family law isn't just about relationships between spouses or parents, it also concerns the relationships between grandchildren and grandparents, between nieces and nephews and aunts and uncles, and between children and other adults with significant roles in their lives

This chapter talks about different kinds of family relationships and how the law can impact on them. This page talks about children's relationships with extended family members and discusses some urban myths about married and unmarried relationships. The other pages in this chapter will go into more detail about married relationships, unmarried spousal relationships and other unmarried relationships.

Introduction

The rules about marriage, separation and divorce are fairly straightforward, despite some fairly common misunderstandings.

To be able to marry, the spouses must, among other things, be unmarried, sane and over a certain age. They must also be married by a person properly licenced to conduct marriages, either a civil marriage commissioner or an authorized religious official. The process for getting married in British Columbia is described in detail in the How do I ? section of this website, and the following chapter, Marriage & Divorce > Marriage, provides a lot more information about the law relating to marriage.

Separation simply means making the decision that the marriage has broken down. You don't have to move out to separate, you just have to tell your spouse that things have come to an end and that you'd like to end the relationship. The ins and outs of separation are discussed in the Marriage & Divorce > Separation chapter, and some of the things that a couple thinking of separating might want to keep in mind are listed in the How do I ? section. The emotional dimensions of ending a relationship are discussed in the chapter Marriage & Divorce > Separating Emotionally.

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.

Married Relationships

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 Historical Meaning of Marriage

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").

Marriage Today

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.

If there is a difference between married and being common-law these days, that is, a difference apart from the legal and religious dimensions, it's probably that marriage implies a greater sense of personal commitment to the relationship and a willingness to treat the relationship as a true partnership. It is just too easy to get out of a common-law relationship. Marriage means something more permanent and signals a personal dedication to nuturing and growing the relationship, and to sticking it out through the good times and the bad.

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.

Annulment

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:

a female spouse was under the age of twelve or a male spouse was under the age of fourteen (the common law ages of puberty); one or both of the spouses did not consent to the marriage; a male spouse is impotent or a female spouse is sterile going into the marriage; the marriage cannot be consumated; the marriage was a sham; or, one or both of the spouses agreed to marry as a result of fraud or misrepresentation. More information about void marriages, voidable marriages and annullment is available in the chapter Marriage & Divorce > Marriage.

Separation

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

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:

separation for a period of not less than one year; adultery; or, mental or physical cruelty. It is possible to oppose an application for a divorce order, although this rarely happens. In general, once one of the grounds for divorce has been established, the courts will allow the divorce application, despite the objections of the other spouse.

Common-law couples don't need to get divorced to end their relationship with each other, no matter how long they've lived together.

Back to the top of this chapter.

II. A Few Surprisingly Common Misunderstandings

A lot of people seem to labour under certain misconceptions about what marriage, separation and divorce actually involve. Part of these misunderstandings, I'm sure, come from television and movies, others are urban myths that get spread during a few pints at the pub.

A. Marriage and Getting Married It is not true that a common-law couple is automatically "married" once they've lived together for a certain amount of time. A common-law couple is never legally married unless they have actually had a marriage ceremony. There is no such thing as a "common-law marriage."

You are not legally married unless you have a marriage ceremony and the ceremony is conducted by someone authorized by the provincial government to perform marriages. Your car mechanic can marry you, if your car mechanic is a marriage commissioner, but your Wiccan high priestess cannot legally marry you unless she also happens to be a licenced marriage commissioner.

Las Vegas marriages and other sorts of quickie marriages are valid and binding marriages, so long as the marriages meet the criteria for valid marriages, discussed in the next chapter. If you want to undo the marriage, you'll have to get divorced just like every other valid marriage, and that will usually mean waiting until one year has passed since separation. For example, an alcohol-induced Las Vegas marriage was upheld in the very funny 2005 case of Davison v. Sweeney, simply because the spouses knew what they were doing when they married, despite the fact that they had never had sex and separated two days after the marriage, when their respective holidays ended.

B. Separation and the "Legal Separation" There is no such thing as a "legal separation" in British Columbia, nor is it possible to be "legally separated." Whether you're in a common-law relationship or a formal marriage, you are separated the moment you decide that the relationship is over. That's it, there's no magic to it. When you or your partner announces that the relationship is over and there's no chance of getting back together, boom, you're separated.

To be crystal clear:

you do not need to "file for separation" to be separated (in fact, there's no such thing in British Columbia as "filing for separation", despite what you might see on the websites of the people who sell do-it-yourself legal kits); there are no court or other papers you have to sign to be separated; and, you don't need to appear before a judge, lawyer, shaman or anyone else to be separated. To be separated, you just need to decide that your relationship is over and say so.

The fact that a couple are separated isn't enough to let a spouse remarry, however. You must be formally divorced by an order of the court in order to remarry. If you do remarry without being divorced from the first marriage, the new marriage will be invalid.

On the other hand, the fact that you're separated won't stop you from having a new relationship, including a new relationship which would qualify as a common-law relationship. Technically, this is adultery, but no one except the Pope or your in-laws are likely to care.

C. Divorce and Getting Divorced As far as divorce is concerned, a court must make an order for your divorce or you'll never be divorced. You can have been separated from your spouse for twenty years, but unless a court has actually made an order for your divorce, you'll still be married. It'd be nice (and cheaper) if the passage of time gave rise to an automatic divorce, but it doesn't work that way.

It is not true that you need to have a separation agreement to get a divorce. Separation agreements are helpful to record a settlement of the issues arising when a couple separates, like the division of assets or the payment of support and so forth, but they're not a requirement of the divorce process. You especially don't need a separation agreement if the only issue is whether you'll get a divorce order or not.

It is not true that you remain married if your spouse dies. Once that happens, your marriage is at an end. You do not need to obtain a divorce.

It is also not true that a lack of sex in your relationship automatically ends your marriage, allows the marriage to be declared void, or is otherwise a ground of divorce. Sex has very little to do with divorce, just as it often has little to do with marriage. A lack of sex may spell the end of a relationship and spur a couple's separation, but at law whether you and your spouse are having sex or not is irrelevant.

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

People in virtually any kind of relationship can find themselves having a problem involving family law. Some people are in long-term committed relationships which qualify as common-law, others are in shorter relationships, perhaps lasting for only one night, which produce children. Couples who are parents will need to make decisions about the care of the children and the payment of child support. Common-law couples will need to decide about the payment of spousal support. Unmarried couples may also have to decide about how property will be shared, but the rules that apply are very different than the rules for married spouses.

This chapter will provide a brief introduction to the issues that common-law and other unmarried couples face when a relationship ends, and discuss a few common misunderstandings about unmarried relationships.

I. Introduction

For the purposes of the provincial Family Relations Act, you are in a common-law relationship if you and your partner have lived together as a couple for at least two years. To be clear, the Family Relations Act doesn't actually talk about common-law relationships, it talks about "spouses" and who qualifies as a spouse, and the rights and obligations involved in being a spouse. Under the act, spouses are defined as people who have lived together for two or more years in a marriage-like relationship.

The other group of people the Family Relations Act talks about are "parents." Parents are defined as the biological parents of a child and people are spouses of a parent.

Under the Family Relations Act, people who meet the definition of spouse or parent may have certain responsibilities, like the obligation to pay child support, and certain rights, like the right to apply for spousal support or the right to be involved in the parenting of a child. Parents and spouses can be of the same or opposite genders.

A. Parents, Stepparents and Spouses When married people break up, they are usually concerned about things like spousal support, the division of the family assets, and how the children will be looked after. Common-law couples and other unmarried couples share many of the same problems. From a legal perspective, the difference between married and unmarried couples is about which laws apply and sometimes how they apply.

Married couples can apply for relief under both the federal Divorce Act and the provincial Family Relations Act. The Divorce Act doesn't apply to anyone who isn't married, including common-law couples. Common-law couples can only apply for relief under the provincial Family Relations Act, and the sort of relief they can apply for is, generally speaking, limited to relief involving the care and control of children, child support and spousal support. Unmarried couples who are parents and have lived together for less than two years can only seek relief under the provincial Family Relations Act, and the sort of relief they can apply for is limited to the care of children and child support. Unmarried couples who have lived together for less than two years and aren't parents can't apply for any relief under the Family Relations Act. The same thing applies to unmarried couples who never lived together and don't have a child. All unmarried couples are excluded from the parts of the Family Relations Act that deal with property. Unmarried couples can only divide assets under the law of trusts or, in some cases, under the Partition of Property Act. There's a chart in the next segment that will explain this a bit more easily.

Under s. 1(1) of the Family Relations Act, "parent" is defined like this:

"parent" includes (a) a guardian or guardian of the person of a child, or (b) a stepparent of a child if (i) the stepparent contributed to the support and maintenance of the child for at least one year, and (ii) the proceeding under this Act by or against the stepparent is commenced within one year after the date the stepparent last contributed to the support and maintenance of the child; In other words, a parent includes a biological parent plus the other people this section adds to the definition of parent: a person who is the child's guardian and a person who is a stepmother or stepfather. Subsection (2) says a bit more about qualifying as a stepparent:

(2) For the purpose of paragraph (b) of the definition of "parent" in subsection (1), a person is the stepparent of a child if the person and a parent of the child (a) are or were married, or (b) lived together in a marriage-like relationship for a period of at least 2 years and, for the purposes of this Act, the marriage-like relationship may be between persons of the same gender. Together, these two subsections impose three conditions that must be met to qualify as a stepparent. A stepparent is:

someone who has married a parent or who has lived with a parent in a common-law relationship, as long as:

that person has also contributed to the support of the child for a least one year, and the application for relief under the act is made within one year of the person's contribution to the support of the child. Under s. 1(1) of the Family Relations Act, "spouse" is defined like this:

"spouse" means a person who (a) is married to another person, (b) except under Parts 5 and 6, lived with another person in a marriage-like relationship for a period of at least 2 years if the application under this Act is made within one year after they ceased to live together and, for the purposes of this Act, the marriage-like relationship may be between persons of the same gender, (c) applies for an order under this Act within 2 years of the making of an order (i) for dissolution of the person's marriage, (ii) for judicial separation, or (iii) declaring the person's marriage to be null and void, or (d) is a former spouse for the purpose of proceedings to enforce or vary an order. Being a spouse is a bit simpler than being a stepparent. A spouse is someone who is married to someone else or someone who has:

lived in a marriage-like relationship with someone else, for a period of at least two years as long as:

the application for relief under the act is made within one year of the couple's separation. For couples who have not married, the key issue is whether or not they qualify as spouses under the Family Relations Act because spouses have a broader range of rights and obligations than people who merely qualify as parents. This can be a bit difficult to figure out as it's not always clear how long a couple has lived together, or whether they were a couple for the whole time they lived together, and the act doesn't say what "marriage-like relationship" means. For a more complete discussion of this issue, see the Unmarried Couples > Common-Law Relationships chapter.

B. Different Rights and Responsibilities Unmarried couples can do all of the things married couples can. They can live together, they can have a child together, they can buy a house together, and they can have a relationship that last for decades and looks, in all respects, exactly like a married relationship. Why is there a difference in the way the law treats unmarried couples?

In the 2003 Supreme Court of Canada case of Walsh v. Bona, the court was asked to decide whether it was unfair to deny unmarried couples the benefits of certain legislation that only applied to married couples. In its decision, the court held that regardless of how the similar the parties' relationship appeared to a married relationship, they had nevertheless made the choice not to become married, and the fact that they chose not to marry meant that they had also chosen not to have the benefits of the legislation that applied to married people.

Looking at it another way, getting married implies a certain level of committment that living together usually doesn't. The parties to a marriage expect that their relationship will be permanent, a view which is generally shared by society and by the legislation on family law. The Family Relations Act imposes a greater responsibility on married couples than it does on common-law couples, and a greater responsibility on common-law couples than it does on people who are only parents and not spouses; the Divorce Act doesn't apply to anyone who isn't married.

These are the legal rights available to people who are married and common-law spouses, and to people who are neither married nor common-law but have a child together:

Married Couples Common-Law Couples Parents

Divorce Yes Care of Children Yes Yes Yes Child Support Yes Yes Yes Spousal Support Yes Yes Sharing Family Assets Yes Trust Claims to Assets Yes Yes Yes Government Benefits Yes Usually Wills & Estates Rights Yes Yes Pension Rights Yes Maybe C. The Alternatives to Marriage Project The Alternatives to Marriage Project is an interesting American organization seeking equality for unmarried couples, including straight and same-sex couples, with married couples. It takes the view that people who chose not to marry or cannot marry deserve equal rights and equal protection under the law as married couples. Their website offers a broad array of information for unmarried couples, visit it at www.unmarried.org.

Back to the top of this chapter.

II. A Few Surprisingly Common Misunderstandings

A lot of people seem to have a lot of misconceptions about what being common-law actually involves and how you become common-law. Part of this, I'm sure, comes from television and movies; others are urban myths that get spread during a few pints at the pub. This segment addresses a few of the most common of these mythunderstandings. Sorry about the pun.

A. The Automatic Marriage It is not true that a common-law couple are automatically married once they've lived together for a certain amount of time, nor is there any such thing as a "common-law marriage." You can have lived together for twenty years and still not be legally married; a common-law couple is never married unless there is an actual marriage ceremony performed by someone licenced to perform marriages.

B. "Applying" for Common-Law Status A couple becomes common-law when they qualify as a "spouse" under whatever legislative scheme applies; for most federal laws the couple must have lived together for at least one year, and for most provincial laws the couple must have lived together for at least two years. There's no application to make and no one to apply to. It's all about meeting the defition of "spouse."

C. The Accidental Spouse It is not true that you become common-law spouses simply by living with someone for long enough. You must be living together in a marriage-like relationship to become a common-law couple; mere roommates will not become common-law spouses by accident. There wouldn't be any frat houses if this wasn't the case.

Likewise, a couple won't become common-law spouses if they have a child. They must still live together for long enough to meet the definition of "spouse."

D. Separation and the "Legal Separation" There is no such thing as a "legal separation" in British Columbia, nor is it possible to be "legally separated." Whether you're in a common-law relationship, a marriage or you're just dating, you are separated the moment you decide that the relationship is over. That's it, there's no magic to it. When you or your partner leaves, boom, you're separated. To be completely clear:

you do not need to "file for separation" to be separated; there are no court or other papers you have to sign to be separated; and, you don't need to appear before a judge, lawyer or shaman to be separated. To separate, you just need to decide that your relationship is over and say so.

E. Getting Divorced Common-law spouses do not need to be divorced. Once you've decided to separate, the relationship is over, regardless of how long the relationship may have been. There is no need to get a divorce because there's no marriage to terminate.