It's also making me think a lot about my experiences with common law marriage in Canada. I find that common law marriage is treated legally identically to "official" marriage pretty much everywhere -- you're "family" for things like hospital visits, and qualifying for Student Family Housing; common law spouses can go on each other's vision/dental insurance; you can sponsor someone for Permanent Resident status as your common law spouse. I've been on the lookout for the last few years and I've never encountered something that was restricted to had-a-wedding married couples.
All that is pretty cool! But also, you can be common-law married after a single year of cohabitation. It varies by organization, but both the Canada Revenue Agency (i.e., Canadian IRS) and Citizenship & Immigration Canada set it at 1 year. Ontario sets it at 3 years. In Ontario, if a common law relationship ends, one of the people involved might owe spousal support for the other.
Also: "A conjugal relationship exists when there is a significant degree of commitment between two people. This can be shown with evidence that the couple share the same home, that they support each other financially and emotionally, that they have children together, or that they present themselves in public as a couple."
All of which is to say that I think a lot more people are "married" in Canada than they realise.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2019-02-10 07:50 am (UTC)It's also making me think a lot about my experiences with common law marriage in Canada. I find that common law marriage is treated legally identically to "official" marriage pretty much everywhere -- you're "family" for things like hospital visits, and qualifying for Student Family Housing; common law spouses can go on each other's vision/dental insurance; you can sponsor someone for Permanent Resident status as your common law spouse. I've been on the lookout for the last few years and I've never encountered something that was restricted to had-a-wedding married couples.
All that is pretty cool! But also, you can be common-law married after a single year of cohabitation. It varies by organization, but both the Canada Revenue Agency (i.e., Canadian IRS) and Citizenship & Immigration Canada set it at 1 year. Ontario sets it at 3 years. In Ontario, if a common law relationship ends, one of the people involved might owe spousal support for the other.
Also: "A conjugal relationship exists when there is a significant degree of commitment between two people. This can be shown with evidence that the couple share the same home, that they support each other financially and emotionally, that they have children together, or that they present themselves in public as a couple."
All of which is to say that I think a lot more people are "married" in Canada than they realise.