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In some ways, it may have been easier for Bill Bjornsson, a McGill student from Halifax, to find money for university if he had a kid.

For the second year of his law degree, he wanted to apply for student aid. He thought he qualified because his common-law girlfriend who moved with him from Nova Scotia in 2012 acquired resident status. But he learned through poking around government websites that the law didn’t recognize common-law couples without children.

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Not only did that bar Bjornsson from getting student aid, it also meant he had to pay “roughly $4,000” more as an out-of-province student.

“It seems the government is willing to recognize that a common-law relationship has value only when you have a child. It’s as if my relationship was valueless in the eyes of the Quebec government,” he said.

In the spring of 2014, the law was changed to extend student aid and the Quebec tuition rate to students in childless common-law relationships after three years of living together. For couples with a child, the wait-time is one year.