Common-Law Relationships in Quebec: Union de Fait, Union Parentale, and Your Rights

Quebec does not have "common-law spouses" in the sense the rest of Canada uses that phrase. The Civil Code calls unmarried partners conjoints de fait (de facto spouses), and until mid-2025 they had no automatic right to spousal support or a share of property no matter how long they lived together; a new regime for parents, the union parentale, now changes that picture for some couples, but not all of it.

Information last verified on 2026-08-15. This article has not yet been reviewed by a licensed lawyer.

"Common Law" Is Not a Quebec Legal Term

Every other Canadian province built its family law around a spectrum: married couples get one set of rules, and unmarried couples who cohabit long enough get pulled partway into similar protections, usually for support and sometimes for property. Quebec did not build its law that way, and using the phrase "common law" to describe Quebec couples obscures that difference rather than describing it.

The Civil Code of Québec calls an unmarried partner a conjoint de fait, or "de facto spouse," and the relationship itself a union de fait. This is not a synonym for "common-law spouse" as used in Ontario, Alberta, or the rest of Canada. In those provinces, cohabiting long enough (or having a child together) triggers real legal consequences, most often a right to spousal support. In Quebec, becoming a conjoint de fait, by itself, has historically triggered almost none of the property or support consequences that flow automatically from marriage or a civil union. The reasons for that gap, and how a 2025 reform narrowed it for some couples, are the rest of this page.

Why Quebec Is Different: Eric v. Lola at the Supreme Court of Canada

The case that settled how far Quebec's approach could go is widely known by the pseudonyms used in the lower courts, Eric v. Lola. At the Supreme Court of Canada it is styled Quebec (Attorney General) v. A, 2013 SCC 5, [2013] 1 S.C.R. 61. A wealthy Quebec businessman and his former partner of several years, who had three children together but never married, disputed whether Quebec's exclusion of de facto spouses from key Civil Code protections violated the equality guarantee in section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The Supreme Court's own headnote states the result plainly:

"The appeals of the Attorney General of Quebec and B should be allowed, and the appeal of A should be dismissed. Articles 401 to 430, 432, 433, 448 to 484 and 585 of the Civil Code of Québec are constitutional."

Those article ranges cover the family patrimony (the automatic division of certain family property between married or civil-union spouses), the compensatory allowance (compensation for a spouse's unpaid contributions to the other's wealth), the partnership of acquests (the default matrimonial property regime), and, in article 585, the spousal support obligation itself. The Court's reasoning split several ways (a bare majority found the exclusion did create a distinction based on marital status, but a different majority found that distinction was not discriminatory under section 15), but the bottom-line disposition is not ambiguous: every one of those articles, including the duty to pay spousal support, was upheld as constitutional exactly as written, meaning they apply to married and civil-union spouses and not to de facto spouses.

The judgment repeatedly frames Quebec's approach as a deliberate legislative choice to let people opt out of a shared financial regime by not marrying or entering a civil union, not as an oversight the courts should correct. That framing is the reason Quebec remained, for over a decade after this decision, the one province where an unmarried partner had no statutory right to spousal support or property division, regardless of how long the couple lived together or whether they had children.

What Changed in 2025: The New Union Parentale (Parental Union) Regime

On June 4, 2024, Quebec gave Royal Assent to Bill 56, "An Act respecting family law reform and establishing the parental union regime" (2024, chapter 22). It created a genuinely new status in the Civil Code, the union parentale (parental union), and it is the first time Quebec has given a category of de facto couples an automatic property regime.

Who Is Covered

The trigger is parenthood, not time. Article 521.20 CCQ, inserted by the Act, defines it this way:

"A parental union is formed upon de facto spouses becoming the father and mother or the parents of the same child... Within the meaning of this article, de facto spouses are two persons who share a community of life and who represent themselves publicly as a couple, regardless of how long they have shared a community of life."

There is no minimum cohabitation period. Two people who share a community of life and present themselves publicly as a couple form a parental union the moment they become the legal parents of the same child together, whether by birth or adoption. People who are ascendants, descendants, or siblings of each other cannot form a parental union, and if one partner is already married, in a civil union, or in another parental union, the new union only forms once that earlier status ends.

When It Applies

The coming-into-force rules matter as much as the substantive rights, and they are narrower than "everyone with kids in Quebec is now covered":

• The new Title I.2 on parental unions applies only to couples who become the parents of a shared child after June 29, 2025. In practice, that means a child born or adopted on or after June 30, 2025 puts the couple into the regime automatically.
• Couples who were already parents of a shared child as of June 29, 2025 are not swept into the regime automatically. They can still get its protections, but only by opting in, either by notarial act or by a private writing signed in front of two witnesses.
• The Act as a whole took effect June 30, 2025. A small cluster of sections dealing with the government's child-support calculation service takes effect only on a later date the government has yet to set, while a separate small cluster of unrelated sections already took effect earlier, on the date of assent, June 4, 2024.

What the Parental Union Patrimony Actually Gives You

Forming a parental union automatically creates a "parental union patrimony," made up of:

• The family residence or residences (or the right of use that gives occupancy of them);
• Movable property that furnishes or decorates those residences and is used by the household; and
• Motor vehicles used for family travel.

Property one spouse received by gift or inheritance, before or during the union, is excluded, as is a minor spouse's property until they reach the age of majority. On the end of the union, whether by separation or death, the net value of this patrimony is divided equally between the spouses, or between the surviving spouse and the heirs, the same 50/50 mechanic used for the married-couple family patrimony. Spouses can agree to change what is in the patrimony, or withdraw from the regime entirely, but only by a formal notarial act, on pain of the change being void.

The family-residence protections that let a married or civil-union spouse ask a court for exclusive occupancy, or to bar the other spouse from the home, are extended to parental-union spouses as well. And a spouse who was impoverished while the other spouse's wealth grew because of their unpaid contributions to the household can claim a compensatory allowance, the same remedy at issue in the 2013 Supreme Court case, now made available to parental-union spouses too.

What the Parental Union Regime Does Not Give You: No Spousal Support

This is the point most secondary summaries of Bill 56 get right, and it is worth stating without hedging: the union parentale regime does not create any right to spousal support. Article 585 CCQ, the provision the Supreme Court upheld as constitutional in Quebec (Attorney General) v. A, was not amended by Bill 56 at all. A parental-union spouse gets a share of the parental union patrimony and, potentially, a compensatory allowance, but not ongoing support payments the way a married or civil-union spouse can obtain them on separation. If you were counting on Bill 56 to have closed that particular gap, it has not.

Intestacy: What a Surviving Parental-Union Spouse Inherits

Dying without a will used to leave a de facto spouse in Quebec with nothing under the Civil Code's intestacy rules, no matter how long the couple lived together. Bill 56 changed that for parental-union spouses specifically, and the current consolidated text of the Civil Code on LégisQuébec confirms exactly how.

Article 653 CCQ, as amended by the 2024 reform, now reads:

"Unless otherwise provided by testamentary provisions, a succession devolves to the surviving married, civil union or parental union spouse and relatives of the deceased, in the order and according to the rules provided in this Title."

That single change (adding "or parental union" to the list of spouses who can inherit) pulls a parental-union spouse into the same intestacy scheme married and civil-union spouses already used. The actual division is set out a few articles later, and it is a fixed fraction, not a court-determined amount:

Art. 666: "If the deceased leaves a spouse and descendants, the succession devolves to them. The spouse takes one-third of the succession and the descendants, the other two-thirds."

Art. 667: "Where there is no spouse, the entire succession devolves to the descendants."

If there is no surviving spouse, article 667 sends everything to the descendants. Going the other direction, if the deceased leaves a spouse but no other close heirs, the spouse's share climbs:

Art. 671: "Where there are neither descendants, privileged ascendants nor privileged collaterals, the entire succession devolves to the surviving spouse."

Art. 672: "Where there are no descendants, two-thirds of the succession devolves to the surviving spouse and one-third to the privileged ascendants."

Art. 673: "Where there are no descendants and no privileged ascendants, two-thirds of the succession devolves to the surviving spouse and one-third to the privileged collaterals."

Put together: a surviving parental-union spouse who shares the estate with the deceased's children takes one-third, with the children splitting the remaining two-thirds. If there are no children but the deceased's parents or siblings survive, the spouse's share rises to two-thirds. And if the spouse is the only close relative left, the entire estate passes to them. This intestacy right did not exist for de facto spouses before Bill 56, and it still only reaches spouses who actually qualify for the parental union regime (or who opted into it); a de facto spouse outside that regime remains excluded from intestacy entirely, the same as before.

Rights De Facto Couples Have Without the Parental Union Regime

None of the above means an unmarried Quebec couple who does not qualify for, or has not opted into, the parental union regime has zero legal standing. Several automatic protections exist outside the property and support scheme, and they matter in practice even though they are narrower.

Health-care consent. Article 15 CCQ names a de facto spouse directly in the hierarchy of people who can consent to care on behalf of someone who cannot consent for themselves:

"If the person of full age is not so represented, consent is given by his or her married, civil union or de facto spouse or, if the person has no spouse or his or her spouse is prevented from giving consent, it is given by a close relative..."

That right does not depend on having a child together or on any minimum cohabitation period under this article; it is simply available to a de facto spouse as such.

Lease occupancy. Under CCQ article 1938, a de facto spouse who has lived with a lessee for at least six months can maintain occupancy of the leased dwelling and become the lessee themselves if that partner dies or leaves.

Filiation presumptions. De facto spouses get certain parentage presumptions for a child born during the relationship, though some of these provisions, particularly around assisted procreation, require at least three years of cohabitation to apply to a de facto couple. That three-year threshold is a different rule from the parental-union trigger above, which has no minimum duration at all; the Civil Code uses different tests for different purposes, and they should not be conflated.

QPP survivor's pension. The Quebec Pension Plan, administered by Retraite Québec, is a separate program from the Civil Code and uses its own definition. Retraite Québec states:

"A de facto spouse may qualify as a surviving spouse if he or she lived with the deceased person for at least 3 years preceding the death. Only one year of cohabitation is required if a child was born or is to be born of their union, if they adopted a child or if one of the spouses adopted the other's child... A de facto spouse is not entitled to a surviving spouse's pension if the deceased person was married to or in a civil union with another person [at the time]."

This is a useful contrast: Quebec's own pension plan recognizes a de facto spouse for survivor benefits on a duration test, even in years when the Civil Code itself gave de facto spouses no property or support rights at all. Do not assume that because Quebec family law treats de facto couples one way, every Quebec program treats them the same way.

Federal Programs Use a Different Test Entirely

None of the Quebec-specific rules above change how federal programs treat a relationship. The Canada Revenue Agency generally treats a couple as common-law for tax and benefit purposes after 12 months of continuous cohabitation, or sooner with a shared child, and federal immigration sponsorship rules have their own cohabitation tests as well. Those are separate federal definitions layered on top of, not derived from, Quebec's Civil Code categories, so qualifying as "common-law" for a tax return or an immigration application says nothing about your rights under Quebec family law.

Protecting Yourselves: Cohabitation Agreements and Protection Mandates

Because the default Civil Code rules give de facto couples so little automatically, especially outside the parental union regime, Quebec courts have been explicit that couples are free to build their own arrangement. The Supreme Court majority in Quebec (Attorney General) v. A itself noted that de facto spouses "are free to shape their relationships as they wish... They can enter into agreements to organize their patrimonial relationships while they live together and to provide for the consequences of a possible breakdown."

The two tools that do that work in Quebec are:

• A cohabitation agreement (contrat de vie commune): an enforceable contract under ordinary Quebec contract law that can set out how property will be handled during the relationship and divided if it ends, and can address support even though the Code itself imposes none.
• A protection mandate (mandat de protection): the standard tool to name a partner as decision-maker or property manager in case of incapacity. This matters because, unlike the health-care consent hierarchy in article 15, the Code's default incapacity-representation rules do not automatically prioritize an unmarried partner, so a couple who wants that protection generally has to create it themselves. See our guide to power of attorney in Quebec for how a mandat de protection is drafted and put into effect.

For broader estate-planning context specific to the province, see our guide to Quebec estate settlement, and for the general Canadian overview of powers of attorney and protection mandates, see power of attorney in Canada.

Quebec Compared: Married/Civil Union, Union Parentale, and De Facto Generally

How Quebec Compares to the Rest of Canada

Every other province discussed in this series (including Ontario and Alberta) gives cohabiting partners at least a statutory right to spousal support once a cohabitation or child threshold is met, even where property division remains limited or unavailable. Quebec's approach is structurally different: outside the new union parentale regime, there is still no statutory spousal support right for de facto spouses at all, a position the Supreme Court has upheld as a constitutional legislative choice. For the full province-by-province picture, see common-law relationships across Canada, and for how property division and support generally work once a relationship does qualify, see dividing property on divorce and spousal support in Canada.

Disclaimer

This article provides general information about Quebec family law and is not legal advice. The union parentale regime is still new, having applied to new couples only since June 30, 2025, and there is not yet a body of reported case law interpreting its provisions. Whether a specific relationship qualifies as a union parentale, how the parental union patrimony applies to particular property, and how intestacy shares are calculated in a given estate all depend on the facts. Consult a licensed Quebec notary or family law lawyer about your situation.