Common-Law Spouses and Contesting a Will in BC

In BC, a common-law spouse is generally someone who lived in a marriage-like relationship with the will-maker for at least two years. Whether that test is met is a question of fact. Courts weigh many factors, such as shared finances, children, how the couple presented themselves, and caregiving.

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Full transcript

So, where do common law spouses sit and how long do you have to be together to count? Common law relationships are basically two years of a marriage-like relationship, and we look at, and that’s ultimately a finding of fact by the court. The court has to look at both subjective and objective intentions of the two parties to find whether or not they’re spouses or not. Subjective, meaning whether or not they actually felt like they were actually spouses to each other. And objective, require looking at the objective factual elements, they look at none of these categories are determinative, but they consider all of them given that every relationship is different and the categories to look at include things like, did they have children together?

Did they have intertwined finances? How did they represent themselves to family and friends? Did they go make vacations together? Did they make promises to each other? Were they in financial intertwined to the point where somebody was dependent on the other with their caregiving involved for elderly couples, all different types of factors they consider, whether or not they were monogamous or they had other partners, all factors to consider whether or not they were spouses or not.

General information, not legal advice.