Canadian Spousal/Common Law Sponsorships

FAMILY CLASS•

APR 09, 2018

Canadian Spousal

If you are married or have lived for one year in a common law relationship with a Canadian citizen or permanent resident, you may be eligible for sponsorship.

Are you married to a Canadian citizen (CC) or permanent resident (PR), or are you in a one-year common law relationship with either? Are you thinking you might like to start the sponsorship and application process? This article is intended to give some broad perspective and some tips as you get ready for that next stage of your life. We encourage you to consider using an authorized representative to assist in you in your Canadian permanent residency quest and ensure that the representative is authorized to provide immigration advice as per Section 91 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

If you are indeed married or have lived for one year in a common law relationship with a CC or PR, you may be eligible for sponsorship. There are requirements for both the sponsor and the applicant and, perhaps most importantly, the marriage/relationship must be deemed as genuine and not for the purposes of gaining admission to Canada or acquiring immigration status under Canada’s immigration laws.

Marriage

The marriage must be valid in the jurisdiction where it took place and must be valid under Canadian law. If a person was married before, a divorce that is valid under Canadian law must have taken place for the current marriage to be valid (unless of course the person was a widow or had their marriage annulled). Be sure to check with a Canadian family legal expert if you are unsure about the validity of your marriage, since “Persons below a certain age cannot marry in Canada without parental consent. To be recognized for immigration purposes, foreign national’s spouses must be 16 years of age” (OP 2, section 5.28, page 23).

Common Law

For Canadian immigration purposes, a common law relationship exists when two persons have resided in a conjugal relationship for at least one year. The two individuals in the relationship must be able to prove that they have lived together in a relationship as described — that is, they must show that it exists based on “facts.” Two room-mates sharing an apartment together would not count as a common law relationship. Couples who are in a common law relationship need not be divorced from previous spouses if they have been separate and apart from their previous spouses for at least one year (and that make sense because they must have lived in their new common law relationship for at least one year!).

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