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Halpern v Canada (AG), [2003] O.J. No. 2268 is a June 10, 2003 decision of the Court of Appeal for Ontario in which the Court found that the common law definition of marriage, which defined marriage as between one man and one woman, violated section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Common-law marriage is a marriage that takes legal effect without the prerequisites of a marriage license or participation in a marriage ceremony. The marriage occurs when two people who are legally capable of being married, and who intend to be married, live together as a married couple and hold themselves out to the world as a married couple.
Although the definition of marriage is governed by federal law, the court only had jurisdiction to implement the ruling within Ontario. The province became the first jurisdiction in North America to recognize same-sex marriage, and the third in the world after the Netherlands and Belgium.
The revised definition of "spouse" extended FMLA leave rights and job protections to eligible employees in a same-sex marriage or a common-law marriage entered into in a state where those statuses were legally recognized, regardless of the state in which the employee worked or resided. [82]
The Court rejected this definition by applying the living tree doctrine used in the famous Persons case, analogizing the exclusion of women from the common law definition of "persons" to that of same-sex couples. The interveners had argued that the meaning of marriage is fixed into convention beyond the reach of the constitution as its old ...
The Civil Marriage Act (French: Loi sur le mariage civil) is a federal statute legalizing same-sex marriage across Canada. At the time it became law, same-sex marriage had already been legalized by court decisions in all Canadian jurisdictions except Alberta , Prince Edward Island , the Northwest Territories , and Nunavut .
Civil marriage should adapt to contemporary notions of marriage as an institution in a society which recognizes the rights of homosexual persons to non-discriminatory treatment." The court gave the Government of Canada until July 2, 2004 to change the definition of marriage to include same-sex couples, similar to the ruling issued in Ontario.
In 1999, the Supreme Court of Canada issued its landmark ruling in the case of M. v. H., which essentially required all provinces to extend the benefits of common-law marriage to same-sex couples, under the equality provisions of Section Fifteen of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. [3]