Abstract
This chapter considers two Canadian legal decisions about the effects upon unmarried conjugal partners when their relationship breaks down. In the absence of legislation, the courts compared married spouses’ benefits to unmarried at breakdown in order to treat discrimination. The way of parsing discrimination is to determine whether human dignity is sought and achieved by provisions of the law. The two decisions hold that no discrimination and so no injustice arises from differences in benefits. This holding is supported by the argument in this chapter that it makes sense to claim that drawing the distinction on the basis of marriage respects human dignity.
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A. c B. July 16, (2009) QCCS 3210, droit de famille 091768. Names of parties, dubbed “Eric and Lola” in a QC media blitz, cannot be published, since the plaintiff was a 17 year old minor when the union with her then 36 year old Canadian partner was begun at her domicile in Brazil. Plaintiff claimed in her own right $56,000 per month, a lump sum of $50M, and a share of the residences and acquests. She had already won shared child care, child care payments of $36,260 per month ($411,122 per year), cost for two round trips to Brazil per year for her and their two children plus $1,000 per day there, all schooling, health professionals, two nannies, a chauffeur and a cook, a lump sum of $250,000, and the Lexus. When the Westmount home proved too difficult, her partner supplied her a $2.5M replacement with a half million more for renovations. Her court costs of $1.5M and experts’ fees of $1.1M were paid by a friend of the court. The Court of Appeal heard the appeal 19 May 2010, (2010) QCCA 1978, droit de famille 102866, and reversed the SC judgment. The Supreme Court of Canada agreed to hear the Quebec government’s appeal of this early in 2012, as A.G.Que. v. A., docket no. 33990.
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© 2013 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.
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Gray, C.B. (2013). Economic Justice in the Oikos: Freedom and Equality in Family Law. In: Stacy, H., Lee, WC. (eds) Economic Justice. AMINTAPHIL: The Philosophical Foundations of Law and Justice, vol 4. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4905-4_6
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