Recognition of common-law spousal relationships in Canadian family law
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Common-law spousal relationships have become increasingly common with a growing number of Canadians electing to enter into them. This thesis appreciates the injustices suffered by common-law spouses during and at the termination of their spousal relationships, and reinforces the view that the denial of marital property benefits dishonors the dignity of common-law spouses. Common-law spouses experience similar needs as their married counterparts when the relationship ends. Most of the current functions of marriage can be fulfilled within common-law spousal relationships and should more appropriately be called functions of the family. Both Canadian courts and the legislatures have acknowledged and responded to the injustices that often flow from power imbalances in unmarried persons' families and have thereby given increased recognition to common-law spousal relationships. They have taken stock of the fact that by not recognizing the rights of common-law spouses in Canada on the basis of their marital status is an affront to justice. Legislatures have also enacted various statutes and have amended existing ones to extend certain rights to common-law spouses. The various ways in which the rights of common-law spouses have been recognized in Canada will be examined and discussed, in particular the remedial notion of constructive trust which is imposed by courts to prevent injustice and unjust enrichment. It is argued this notion of constructive trust has proven effective, especially in cases where property is being divided after a long-term intimate relationship. Common-law spouses have advanced constitutional challenges in their quest to benefit from marital benefits and protections in their relationships since it is argued that both relationships are functionally the same. Finally, this thesis suggests lessons that can be learned from the Canadian developments of recognizing common-law spouses. It also concludes by examining similar developments that have taken place in other countries of Europe and Africa.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.011 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.025 | 0.011 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".