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www.canadianlawyermag.com 49 advantage of the new legislation that says property must be divided equally on breakup, Leckey saw "a slight change in profile, a broader range of families accessing the courts and amounts of money given up, but not a revolution." Something he found interesting in looking at cases under the new legislation was a new source of dispute: the category of unmarried couple. "There are a lot more disputes about whether two people were living together in a marriage-like relationship," he says, "which is the criterion in B.C., or whether they were living in a conjugal relationship, which is a criterion under some of the other provinces' laws. It's interesting to see that even when the legislature reforms the law, there will be bases for resisting, and there will be . . . perhaps quite expensive disputes in front of the courts around whether someone's eligible" for equalizing of assets. While Quebec has been "a little slower to move" toward adopting new legislation, he says, "what's interesting is that the legislature may think [that,] by doing nothing, it's sort of freezing the law." However, "there's real pressure, like real people with their stories in front of the courts puts the judges under pressure. Judges perceive a family when people have been living together and raising kids together." And even recent changes to the province's civil procedure treat unmarried couples like married couples in terms of family rules and the need to advise mediation, he says. Grant doesn't see Ontario, for one, moving in the direction of the provinces and territories that give the same treatment to legal and common law marriages, although he notes that common law legal principles for dividing property have changed to acknowledge not only unjust enrichment but the concept of "joint family ventures," in which the contributions of both spouses have resulted in an accumulation of wealth. "What it comes down to," Grant says, "is whether you're recognizing that people don't get married for a reason, having to do with the economic consequences of marrying; and if you want to respect those rights to not get married and not get into a regime of . . . equalizing of assets, then you're not going to enact legislation that will make common law the same as married." The complete suite of tools for family law professionals is now securely in the cloud Learn more at divorcemate.com or call 1.800.653.0925 Untitled-1 1 2018-07-13 11:07 AM CHANGING SOCIAL NORMS, CHANGING FAMILIES 13.9% increase in number of common law couples in Canada between 2006 and 2011 3.1% increase in number of married couples in Canada between 2006 and 2011 16.7% of census families were common law couples in 2011 16.3% of census families were lone-parent families in 2011