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How often have you heard someone in a relationship say, “It doesn’t matter that we’re not married — living together is the same thing?”

Those people are likely right — until they separate.

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Common law relationships in Canada are increasingly the norm: They have more than quadrupled in number between 1981 and 2011. And depending on where you live in Canada, your rights and obligations might well be different if you have not formally tied the knot.

Why? Because under Canada’s constitution, provinces have the right to legislate what happens to a spouse’s property — and common-law spouses are not treated the same as married spouses in many provinces.

In Ontario, Alberta and New Brunswick, for example, unmarried spouses have no automatic right to share in their partner’s property unless they hold title to property together. (Not so in B.C., though, where in 2011, the law changed and the same property rights were given to spouses who lived together in a “marriage-like relationship … for a continuous period of at least two years.”)