Private Law Theory

ABSTRACT
This chapter surveys the legal approach to unmarried cohabitation in three Canadian provinces: British Columbia, Ontario, and Quebec. The jurisdictions exemplify varying approaches: assimilating unmarried partners to married spouses for virtually all purposes, including them partly in family law, and applying a policy of laissez-faire, by which cohabitation entails no reciprocal rights and obligations under family law. Courts have, however, developed the general private law, chiefly unjust enrichment, to palliate the economic harms arising when cohabitation ends.

Leckey, Robert, De Facto Relationships in Canada (March 8, 2022). Forthcoming in Jens M Scherpe and Andy Hayward (eds), The Legal Status of De Facto Relationships (Cambridge: Intersentia).

First posted 2022-04-05 12:00:04