The Supreme Court of Canada ruled on the “Lola and Eric” case today, upholding Quebec’s Civil Code as it applies to married and unmarried couples in the province. Quebec, home to the largest percentage of unmarried couples in the country, affords fewer rights to these couples. Unlike in, say, Ontario, the amount of alimony a spouse can receive depends on whether the couple was married. “Unmarried couples in Quebec owe each other nothing as a result of their relationship,” McGill family law professor Robert Leckey told Maclean’s in 2009. “In other provinces, you live together for a stated period and there’s a duty to support your partner, as there is for married people. In Quebec, an unmarried couple could be together for 40 years, but the law still sees them as two strangers who happen to share a home.”
The Supreme Court of Canada ruled on the “Lola and Eric” case today, upholding Quebec’s Civil Code as it applies to married and unmarried couples in the province. Quebec, home to the largest percentage of unmarried couples in the country, affords fewer rights to these couples. Unlike in, say, Ontario, the amount of alimony a spouse can receive depends on whether the couple was married. “Unmarried couples in Quebec owe each other nothing as a result of their relationship,” McGill family law professor Robert Leckey told Maclean’s in 2009. “In other provinces, you live together for a stated period and there’s a duty to support your partner, as there is for married people. In Quebec, an unmarried couple could be together for 40 years, but the law still sees them as two strangers who happen to share a home.”
The case pitted one of Quebec’s richest entrepreneurs and businessmen against his ex-girlfriend; the two, who can’t be named, were “Lola and Eric” by the press, and the ensuing media attention was only heightened by Lola’s lead lawyer, the potty-mouth firebrand Anne-France Goldwater.
Maclean’s wrote extensively about the case in 2009. Read it here.
… and here’s the CP report on the ruling.