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You are here: Home / Blog / Changes are Coming for Unmarried Separating Couples in Alberta – Jan 1, 2020

Changes are Coming for Unmarried Separating Couples in Alberta – Jan 1, 2020

December 10, 2019 By Stephanie Dobson

There’s a new Act coming into force on January 1, 2020 – the Family Property Act – replacing the current Matrimonial Property Act.  The biggest change is that this legislation now gives unmarried separating couples in Alberta the right to automatically divide their assets and debts.  This is huge – until now, these separated couples had to prove that there should be a division of assets and debts accumulated during the relationship using the antiquated common law doctrine of unjust enrichment.

Another huge leap forward for unmarried separating couples or those who live together for a long period prior to marriage is the issue of “exemptions” – one example of an exemption is property owned by one of the parties prior to the relationship/marriage.  Under the current law, for the most part the exemption is only given to items owned at the date of marriage.  Now, it will go back all the way to the date that the adult interdependent relationship started – for married & unmarried people.

In order for unmarried former couples to fall within the scope of the legislation, they must fit within the definition of “adult interdependent partners” by virtue of:

  • Living together for over 3 years
  • Living together for under 3 years but have a child together
  • Have entered into an agreement wherein they define themselves as such

Another important piece to this is that the legislation requires that in order to be eligible to automatically divide assets and debts, the couple must not have separated prior to January 1, 2020 and cannot be “former adult interdependent partners” as defined by the legislation.  Any former couples falling into this category must default back to the old-school “unjust enrichment” arguments.

For more information or to see whether you are eligible to use this new legislation to effect your division of assets and debts, please contact our office.

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The collaborative process worked wonderful for myself and my ex. We pretty well had things worked out with our daughter before meeting with our lawyers which really helped the process. Which our lawyers really admired. My ex and I have no hard feelings between us we just had a hard time starting to talk about the division of property and finances. Which is why I wanted to give the collaborative … [Read More...]

Filed Under: Blog, Collaborative Divorce, Division of Property, Separation & Divorce

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