Rob_TO said:
You can read lots of info here: http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/resources/manuals/op/op02-eng.pdf . It mentions insurance policies in many places as proof of a genuine relationship in general.
This is just common sense though. If you have shared financial interest in each other, it adds more proof of a real relationship. It's not a mandatory requirement, but definitely helps.
Thanks for that link. But I think that applies to conjugal/common-law partners who have no marriage certificate. So adding their partners on their beneficiaries shows a level of commitment. Read this:
Persons in a conjugal relationship have made a significant commitment to one another. A married
couple makes the commitment publicly at a specific point in time via their marriage vows and
ceremony, and the marriage certificate and registration is a record of that commitment. In a
common-law or conjugal partner relationship, there is not necessarily a single point in time at
which a commitment is made, and there is no one legal document attesting to the commitment.
Instead, there is the passage of time together, the building of intimacy and emotional ties and the
accumulation of other types of evidence, such as naming one another as beneficiaries of
insurance policies or estates, joint ownership of possessions, joint decision-making with
consequences for one partner affecting the other, and financial support of one another (joint
expenses or sharing of income, etc. When taken together, these facts indicate that the couple has
come to a similar point as that of a married couple – there is significant commitment and mutual
interdependence in a monogamous relationship of some permanence.
