Supreme Court Denies Allowing Alimony to De Facto Couples In Quebec

This article was last updated on April 16, 2022

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The Supreme Court of Canada announced a decisive ruling today, declaring that unmarried couples of Quebec that live together and later split up are not considered as married, and hence shall not receive the rights of legally married couples like spousal support. The judgment had a slight 5-4 majority, explaining that the province’s civil code is constitutional in its treatment of the financial entitlement of couples who are not legally married and who separate.

This decision makes Quebec the only province of Canada, where “de facto” marriages are not legitimate, even though Quebec has an estimated  31.5 per cent of couples in de facto relationships, in comparison to the overall 12.1 per cent in the rest of Canada. Explaining the majority point of view, Justice Louis LeBel, alleged that there are no charter violation in effect as the current provincial law promotes autonomy. The ruling mentioned that “The Quebec National Assembly has not favoured one form of union over another” and “the legislature has merely defined the legal content of the different forms of conjugal relationships. It has made consent the key to changing the spouses’ mutual patrimonial relationship.”

Lastly, the ruling concluded that “in this way, it has preserved the freedom of those who wish to organize their patrimonial relationships outside the mandatory statutory framework.” Regardless of the fact that Quebec’s Civil Code does not authenticates the standing of de facto spouses, several laws like social assistance, income tax and Quebec’s Pension Plan, still identify them as couples.