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Canada

Canadian laws on the recognition of unmarried cohabitation for legal purposes vary significantly by province/territory; and in addition to this, federal regulations also have an impact across the country (see Common-law marriage#Canada). Family formation has undergone significant changes in Canada during the last decades of the 20th century, but the patterns vary widely across the country, suggesting differing cultural norms in different regions. From 1995, births to cohabiting parents have increased, particularly in Quebec. In Canada, it is difficult to obtain exact data on the percentage of births outside marriage, because data on the marital status of mothers is collected differently across the provinces and territories of Canada, and in some (such as Alberta) it is not broken down in detail in regard to whether the mother was legally married or not at the birth of her child. As of 2012, the statistical category of "single mothers" (defined as never married at the time of the birth) encompassed 28.3% of mothers, the category "divorced" (i.e. mothers who were unmarried at the time of birth, but had been previously married during their lives) encompassed 1%, while for 10% of mothers the marital status was unknown ("not stated"). There are, however, very significant differences by province/territory; for example in 2012, 77.8% of births in Nunavut were listed to "single mothers", by contrast, less than 20% of mothers in Ontario were listed in this category. Latest data from the Quebec Statistical Institute shows that as of 2015, in Quebec, 63% of children were born to unmarried women. In Canada, legal issues regarding cohabitation are very complicated by the fact that family law in this regard differs by province/territory, which is very confusing to the public, especially as this contrasts to criminal law which is the same across Canada, as well as to marriage and divorce law, which is also the same across the country, under the 1986 Divorce Act (Canada) (although provinces/territories have jurisdiction over some marital issues, including the solemnization of marriage, spousal and child support, and property division). The marital status of Canadians also varies by province/territory: in 2011, 46.4% of the population aged 15 and over was legally married; ranging from the lowest percentage of married people being in Nunavut (29.7%), Northwest Territories (35.0%), Quebec (35.4%), and Yukon (37.6%); to highest being in Newfoundland and Labrador (52.9%), Prince Edward Island (51.7%), Ontario (50.3%) and Alberta (50.2%). While today Quebec is known for liberal family formation and cohabitation, this is a recent development: during the first half of the 20th century, family life in the province was conservative and strongly dominated by Roman Catholicism; before 1968, there was no provincial divorce legislation in Quebec, and spouses could only end their marriage if they obtained a private Act of Parliament. One of the explanations of the current high rates of cohabitation in Quebec is that the traditionally strong social control of the church and the Catholic doctrine over people's private relations and sexual morality has led the population to rebel against traditional and conservative social values. While some provinces were early to modernize family law, in others this only happened in the 1990s and the 21st century, such as in Alberta, through the Family Law Act (Alberta) which came into force in 2005. This Act overhauled family legislation, replacing the Domestic Relations Act, the Maintenance Order Act, the Parentage and Maintenance Act, and parts of the Provincial Court Act and the Child, Youth and Family Enhancement Act, which were seen as outdated. Also, the Adult Interdependent Relationships Act (S.A. 2002, c. A-4.5) amended 69 Alberta laws. The Canadian Prairies provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan have strong common-law spouses regulations, imposing rights and obligations on common-law couples. Nova Scotia has also been very slow to advance family law – it was only in 1999 that this province abolished discrimination against "illegitimate" children with regard to inheritance (through section 16 of NS Intestate Succession Act amended in 1999). In general, today, provinces in Western Canada give more rights to common-law spouses than those in Atlantic Canada and in Quebec. This may seem quite paradoxical, because it is the eastern provinces which have the strongest tradition of cohabitation; according to a study "unmarried cohabitation seems to be more common in Eastern Canada than in Western Canada, which might be related to internal and international migration". (as of 2012, 48% of births in New Brunswick, 47.1% in Newfoundland and Labrador, and 45.2% in Nova Scotia, were listed to "single mothers", way above the national average). In British Columbia, the Family Law Act came into force in 2013.