Common-law partnership agreement

Never. In Québec no length of cohabitation turns a de facto union into a marriage or opens up the rights of married spouses. Two years, five years or twenty-five make no difference to the spouses' legal position towards each other.

It is a legal regime that came into force on 30 June 2025. It applies automatically to de facto spouses who become the parents of the same child born or adopted from that date, who live together and hold themselves out publicly as a couple. No step is required. Couples whose child was born before that date may opt in by agreement.

The family residences or the rights conferring use of them, the furniture that furnishes them and serves for household use, and the automobiles used for family travel. Property received by succession or by gift is excluded. RRSPs, pension plans and accumulated salaries are not part of it, unlike the family patrimony of married spouses.

It depends on your situation. Outside a parental union, no: a de facto spouse is not a legal heir and receives nothing, however long you lived together. Within a parental union, the surviving spouse takes one third of the estate and the children two thirds. In both cases a will remains the only way to go beyond what the law provides.

No. There is no support obligation between de facto spouses, and a parental union does not create one either: on separation it is not possible to claim support for yourself. Child support, by contrast, is owed whatever the couple’s situation, because it belongs to the child.

No. The agreement deals with separation, while you are both alive. The will deals with death. Outside a parental union the will is the only way to make your spouse an heir; within a parental union it is the only way to go beyond the third the law provides. A couple in a de facto union normally needs both, and they are best prepared together so that they say the same thing.

Each of you leaves with whatever is in your own name. The one whose name is not on the title to the house has in principle no right to it, even after paying half the hypothec. What remains is to ask the court for compensation for unjust enrichment, proving the impoverishment, the enrichment and the link between them: a long, expensive and uncertain route that the agreement avoids.

Yes, by notarial contract and with both spouses consenting. The timing matters: within 90 days of the birth or the adoption, the patrimony is deemed never to have existed; after that, the value accumulated since the birth has to be shared. Opting out of the patrimony does not make the rest of the regime disappear: protection of the family residence and the compensatory allowance remain.

The law does not require it for the cohabitation agreement itself. In practice a notarial act settles three things: the original stays in safekeeping at the office and cannot be altered afterwards, your identity and your understanding of the act are verified, and the clauses are drafted to withstand a challenge. To remove property from the parental union patrimony, however, a notarial contract is compulsory.

Yes, with both spouses consenting. An agreement is worth revisiting when the situation changes: buying or selling a property, the arrival of a child, a significant change in income, or the end of a period in which one of you cut back on paid work.