BC Common-Law Status: Property, Support, and Deadlines

A common-law relationship in BC is a legal status you fall into automatically: once you have lived with your partner in a marriage-like relationship for two continuous years, the province’s Family Law Act treats you as a spouse, with rights to property division, spousal support, and inheritance that largely mirror those of married couples. No registration, no ceremony, no paperwork. Just time, and in some cases a child together.

That automatic quality is what trips people up. The rights appear on their own, and so do the deadlines that go with them.

When BC Considers You Common-Law

Section 3 of the Family Law Act defines a spouse as someone who has lived with another person in a marriage-like relationship for at least two continuous years. Hit that threshold and the full set of provincial spousal rules applies.

There is a second route for couples who have a child together by birth or adoption. If you live in a marriage-like relationship and share a child, you qualify as a spouse for spousal support purposes before the two-year mark. The shortcut stops there. To claim a share of your partner’s property or split joint debts under the Family Law Act, you still need two full years of cohabitation, child or no child.

The Federal 12-Month Rule Is Different

For federal tax purposes, the Canada Revenue Agency treats you as common-law after only 12 continuous months of living in a conjugal relationship, or immediately if you have a child together.¹ You can owe the CRA a status update and need to file as a couple a full year before BC grants you any property rights. The two timelines are independent, and mixing them up leads to missed tax obligations or wrong assumptions about what you’re entitled to on separation.

Property and Debt: The 50/50 Default

Once you qualify as a spouse under BC law, each partner has an equal right to all family property and equal responsibility for all family debt. Section 81 of the Family Law Act gives each spouse an undivided half interest in family property as a tenant in common, regardless of whose name is on the title or who contributed more.² This covers real estate, business interests, pensions, retirement savings, corporate shares, and money in bank accounts.

The equal split is a default. A cohabitation or separation agreement can override it, and a court can order an unequal division if the 50/50 result would be significantly unfair. Without either, equal is the starting point.

What Stays With You

Section 85 excludes several categories from division:

Property you owned before the relationship began.
Inheritances and gifts received from someone other than your partner.
Damage awards and insurance proceeds, except portions that replaced income or compensated both of you.
A beneficial interest in a discretionary trust settled by someone else, where you didn’t contribute.

The catch is important. The excluded property itself stays yours, but any increase in its value during the relationship is family property and gets divided.² A condo you brought in worth $400,000 that’s worth $600,000 at separation puts $200,000 on the table. The spouse claiming an exclusion has to prove it.

Family Debt

Debt incurred for a family purpose during the relationship is split equally. Credit card balances used for household expenses, joint lines of credit, and mortgages on shared property all qualify. Debt that clearly benefited only one spouse, or was run up recklessly as the relationship ended, may be treated differently by a court.

Spousal Support

A common-law spouse can claim spousal support to address financial imbalances the relationship created. The Family Law Act sets out four objectives: recognizing economic advantages or disadvantages caused by the relationship, sharing the financial consequences of caring for children, relieving hardship from the breakup, and promoting self-sufficiency within a reasonable time.³

Amount and duration depend on how long you lived together, the roles each of you played, and current financial circumstances. A partner who paused their career for the relationship is more likely to receive support, and for longer, than one who kept earning independently throughout. Couples with a child together can claim spousal support even before the two-year mark, but as noted above, property division still requires the full two years.

Child Support Is Separate

Child support obligations have nothing to do with spousal status. Both parents owe child support regardless of whether they ever lived together. In BC, support follows the Federal Child Support Guidelines, calculated using income-based tables tied to the paying parent’s annual income.⁴ Extraordinary expenses like childcare, medical costs, and extracurriculars are shared proportionally on top of the base amount.

Inheritance Rights When a Partner Dies

This is where many common-law partners are caught off guard. Under BC’s Wills, Estates and Succession Act, a common-law spouse who has lived with their partner for at least two years qualifies as a spouse for inheritance purposes.⁵ If your partner dies without a will, you are entitled to a share of their estate.

What you receive depends on whether your partner has descendants. If there are none, the entire estate goes to you. If the descendants are children of both you and the deceased, you receive the household furnishings plus a preferential share of $300,000 (or a prescribed greater amount), then split the remainder equally with the descendants. If the descendants are not your children, the preferential share drops to $150,000.⁵

These rights disappear the moment the relationship ends. Common-law spouses cease being spouses once one or both terminate the relationship. That differs from married couples, where spousal status for estate purposes continues until a property-triggering event. Separate on Monday, your partner dies on Tuesday, and you may have no inheritance claim at all. A will matters more for common-law couples than many realize.

Splitting CPP Credits After Separation

After separation, either former partner can apply to split the Canada Pension Plan credits earned during the time you lived together. You must have cohabited for at least 12 consecutive months and been living apart for at least 12 consecutive months at the time of the application.⁶ The application has to be made within 48 months of the date you began living apart. Miss that window and the right is gone unless your former partner agrees in writing to waive the time limit.

BC has one wrinkle: a written agreement between spouses can prevent a CPP credit split if it explicitly addresses pension credit division. In most other provinces, private agreements can’t block the split.⁶

Updating Your Status With the CRA

Once you meet the CRA’s 12-month cohabitation threshold, you have to notify the agency by the end of the month following the change. Became common-law in March, you report by the end of April.⁷ You can update online through your CRA account (processed immediately), by phone, or by mailing Form RC65 (four to six weeks). The CRA advises against waiting until tax season.

Combined household income affects eligibility for income-tested benefits, so the switch isn’t only administrative. Both partners have to file tax returns every year to keep benefit payments flowing.

Writing Your Own Rules: Cohabitation Agreements

A cohabitation agreement lets you opt out of the default property split or set your own terms for support. Under section 92 of the Family Law Act, spouses can agree to divide property and debt unequally, exclude certain assets from the pool, or include items that otherwise wouldn’t count as family property.²

For an agreement to hold up, it must be in writing, signed by both parties, and witnessed by at least one person (the same witness can sign for both). Both partners must share full and honest disclosure of their income, expenses, assets, and debts before signing.⁸ Independent legal advice isn’t technically mandatory, but skipping it is one of the fastest ways to get an agreement thrown out. A court can set aside the agreement if one partner failed to disclose significant assets, took advantage of the other’s vulnerability, or if a partner didn’t understand what they were signing.²

Even a properly executed agreement can be overturned if a court later finds it significantly unfair, taking into account how much time has passed and how much each party relied on it. Agreements cannot limit child support, and any terms about parenting arrangements can only be made after separation, not in advance.

Deadlines That Can End Your Rights

The timelines are unforgiving. Miss them and the right is gone.

Property, debt, and pension division: you must start a court proceeding within two years of the date you separated.⁹
Spousal support: the same two-year limitation applies from the date of separation.⁹
CPP credit splitting: 48 months from the date you began living apart.
CRA status notification: by the end of the month following the status change.

For common-law couples, the two-year clock starts on the separation date, not on any court order. Married couples get the clock from the date of divorce or annulment. Common-law partners don’t go through a formal divorce, so the separation date itself is the trigger, which makes documenting that date matter.

Proving the Relationship and the Separation Date

If your partner disputes the relationship or its length, courts look at overlapping indicators rather than any single document. Joint lease or mortgage papers, shared utility accounts, and joint bank statements show financial entanglement. Tax returns listing each other as common-law partners carry particular weight because they show how you presented the relationship to the government. Correspondence addressed to both of you, shared holiday plans, and introductions as a couple to friends and family fill in the social side. Not every indicator has to be present; judges weigh the arrangement as a whole.

You also don’t need to move out to be legally separated. A common-law relationship can end while both partners stay in the same home, as long as one person clearly communicates an intent to end the marriage-like relationship. The separation date is when the relationship ends, not when someone physically leaves. Proving it is harder under one roof, so courts look at whether you stopped sharing a bedroom, stopped socializing as a couple, divided household responsibilities, and told others it was over. A dated text, email, or letter communicating the end of the relationship can prevent later arguments about when the limitation clock started. Under the Family Law Act, spouses are not treated as having separated if they resume living together within a year primarily to reconcile and stay together for at least 90 days total.²

1
Canada Revenue Agency. Marital Status
2
British Columbia Laws. Family Law Act – Part 5 Property Division
3
British Columbia Laws. Family Law Act – Part 7 Child and Spousal Support
4
Department of Justice Canada. Federal Child Support Tables
5
British Columbia Laws. Wills, Estates and Succession Act
6
Government of Canada. Divorced or Separated: Splitting Canada Pension Plan Credits
7
Canada Revenue Agency. Update Your Personal Information With the CRA
8
Legal Aid BC. Living Together — Making Agreements
9
British Columbia Laws. Family Law Act – Part 12 Transition, Consequential Amendments and Commencement