In Major v. Lacey, 2026 BCSC 1362, the parties were in an exclusive romantic relationship for 18 years. They travelled together, spent holidays with each other’s families, supported each other financially, included each other in their estate planning, and even swore an affidavit stating that they were in a “common-law relationship.” Yet the Court found that they were not spouses under British Columbia’s Family Law Act (the “FLA”).
The parties were together from 2006 to 2024 but maintained separate homes in Montreal and North Vancouver. They saw each other regularly, spending about three months together each year through visits, vacations and work-related layovers. The respondent provided significant financial support to the claimant, and they made provisions for each other in their estate and retirement planning. In 2012, they both swore an affidavit declaring that they were in a “common-law relationship” so the respondent and his son could receive benefits through the claimant’s employment with Air Canada.
So Why Weren’t They Spouses?
Under section 3(1)(b)(i) of the FLA, unmarried partners are spouses if they have lived with each other in a marriage-like relationship for a continuous period of at least two years. The Court emphasized the distinction between the two requirements. A relationship may be marriage-like, but the parties must also have lived together.
That was where the claim failed. Neither party had a key to the other’s home, received mail there, or kept many belongings there. Their time together was spread across different locations and relatively short visits, rarely lasting more than a week. There was no home to which they both had a sufficiently consistent and enduring connection to call it a shared home. The Court found that they had not cohabited, despite the many other features of their relationship that pointed toward marriage.
Do Couples Have to Share an Address?
Not necessarily. The Court recognized that “living together” is a flexible concept and that a couple can potentially cohabit without sharing one fixed address or while spending periods apart. What matters is the consistency, regularity and duration of their shared living arrangements. Here, regular visits, vacations and time spent together were not enough.
The Takeaway
This case shows that a long-term, committed relationship does not automatically make two people spouses under the FLA. For long-distance couples, or couples who choose to maintain separate homes, the key question may be whether they actually lived together, not simply how serious or long-lasting the relationship was.
**This article was written by Ms. Urvi Sardesai, LLB Queen Mary University of London and Masters degree in Law from UBC, lawyer at Ben Ingram & Associates and Georgialee Lang Law Corp.