Cohabitation not required to be considered spouses
Peterson’s wild-card team edges N.W.T. skip Galusha to qualify for championship pool
The one thing worse than a break-up is one where you discover, much to your surprise, that your partner is able to advance claims against you when you had assumed the contrary.
Many people are aware of the fact that unmarried spouses have a right to claim spousal support and child support, usually because they’ve been living together for two years or more.
What may surprise you is that even in cases where you maintain separate residences you may be found to be spouses.
What? You don’t have to actually live together to claim an interest in property and seek spousal support? The answer is: not strictly and not always.
Climans v. Latner is a case from the Ontario Court of Appeal where a couple was in a relationship for 14 years, but never married and never really “moved in” together, yet the court found they were “spouses” and ordered Mr. Latner to pay spousal support of $53,077 for a period of 10 years (equivalent to over $6 million over that time). That is not the kind of news you want to receive after a break-up and certainly not a pleasant surprise.
In this case, the court found the couple to be “spouses” within the meaning of the Ontario Family Law Act despite the fact they had not cohabited in the normal sense, which is usually a precondition.
They had, however, been in a conjugal relationship and spent significant amounts of time together, including months at a lake cottage in the summer. The court looked at the entirety of the relationship and found that there was “some element” of living together in a conjugal relationship. In doing so, even though the couple maintained separate residences throughout their relationship the court found them to be “spouses” and an entitlement to significant spousal support.
While this is a case from a different province, the Ontario Court of Appeal is persuasive in B.C. courts and one can expect this case will eventually be put before a B.C. judge in a case on similar facts. Countless numbers of people face the risk of a nasty surprise if their relationship, which they likely assume doesn’t give rise to property division rights, comes to an end.
So what to do? Adopt the Scouts motto: be prepared! It is never too late to have the discussion with your spouse about a cohabitation agreement. Ideally, have the agreement prepared by a competent lawyer who practices in the area. Mr. Latner would have saved a substantial amount of money had he secured a cohabitation agreement with Ms. Climans.
The enforceability of a cohabitation agreement depends on a number of factors such as fully disclosing income and assets, the circumstances of execution and the wording of the document so it pays to invest in a good agreement.
Good drafting is also an important guard against overturning an agreement and that requires a lawyer’s assistance. There are online resources available, but it is strongly encouraged to start with professional legal advice.
Entering into an agreement at the outset of a relationship decreases the chances of a dispute on the end of that relationship. The law can change and certainly at the time that Mr. Latner began seeing Ms. Climans, there were no cases of note that would find them to be spouses while maintaining separate residences.
Mr. Latner was not unreasonable to presume at that time that he was at little risk without an agreement.
At times, the law can surprise people, even those who are well-prepared. Financial obligations on the end of a relationship can be significant and the case in Climans v. Latner serves as a reminder that a cohabitation agreement at the outset of a relationship is an important step missed by many who presume, often incorrectly, that one is not needed.
CALGARY — Beth Peterson of Team Wild Card Three defeated Kerry Galusha of the Northwest Territories 9-8 on Thursday to secure a berth in the championship pool at the Canadian women’s curling championship.
Peterson, who stole singles in the last two ends, improved to 5-3 with the extra-end victory to make the four-team cut in Pool A. Galusha (4-4) was eliminated with the loss.
Alberta’s Laura Walker (5-3) also qualified with an 11-1 victory over Yukon’s Laura Eby.
Ontario’s Rachel Homan beat Canada’s Kerri Einarson 7-4 in a rematch of last year’s Scotties Tournament of Hearts final. Both teams, who had already secured championship pool spots, moved to 7-1.
Team Wild Card Two’s Mackenzie Zacharias (3-5) posted a 9-4 win over Northern Ontario’s Krysta Burns (2-6) in the other Pool A afternoon game.
The Pool B picture remained up in the air entering the evening draw at the Markin MacPhail Centre.
Manitoba’s Jennifer Jones and Saskatchewan’s Sherry Anderson picked up victories in the morning draw to create a three-team logjam at 5-2. Quebec’s Laurie St-Georges, who was idle, was also in first place.
Chelsea Carey, skipping Team Wild Card One as a substitute for Tracy Fleury, thumped Newfoundland and Labrador’s Sarah Hill 11-2 to finish the preliminary round at 5-3.
Jones, seeking a record seventh Scotties title, downed New Brunswick’s Melissa Adams 12-3. Anderson needed a point in the final end for an 8-7 win over British Columbia’s Corryn Brown (3-4).
P.E.I.’s Suzanne Birt improved to 4-3 with a come-from-behind 10-8 win over
Nunavut’s Lori Eddy.
Nova Scotia’s Jill Brothers missed the cut in Pool A at 3-5 while Eby is 0-8.
In Pool B, Adams took a 3-4 record into the late draw. Hill had a 2-5 mark while Eddy was 0-7.
If a tiebreaker is needed to determine who will make the four-team cut in Pool B, it will be played Friday morning.
Records will carry over into the two-day championship round. Each team will play four games against teams that qualified from the other preliminary round pool.
The top three teams will advance to Sunday’s playoffs. The top seed goes straight to the evening final and the secondand third-place teams will meet in an afternoon semifinal.
The Hearts winner will get a berth in the Tim Hortons Curling Trials and earn $100,000 of the $300,000 total purse. The champion will also return to the 2022 Scotties as Team Canada.
If the women’s world championship is rescheduled for this season, the Hearts winner will represent Canada.
The March 5-14 Tim Hortons Brier will be the next event to be held in the spectatorfree bubble. The Canada Olympic Park venue will host six bonspiels in all through late April.
The PGA without Tiger Woods was always inevitable purely because of age. His shattered right leg from his SUV flipping down a hill on a sweeping road through coastal Los Angeles suburbs only brings that closer.
Golf isn’t ready to contemplate the future of its biggest star after the 10th and most complicated surgery on the 45-year-old Woods. There was more relief that he was alive.
“When Tiger wants to talk about golf, we’ll talk about golf,” commissioner Jay Monahan said. “When you’re going to overcome what he needs to overcome, I think the love of all of our players and everybody out here, it’s going to come forward in a big way and across the entire sporting world.
“I think he’ll feel that energy and I think that’s what we should all focus on.”
Woods made it clear what he faces with an update posted early Wednesday to social media by his team that outlined the “long surgical procedure.”
Chief medical officer Anish Mahajan said Woods shattered tibia and fibula bones on his right leg in multiple locations. Those were stabilized by a rod in the tibia. He said a combination of screws and pins were used to stabilize additional injuries in the ankle and foot.
Four previous surgeries to repair ligaments were done on the left knee. This is the first major trauma to the right leg. Woods has had five surgeries on his lower back in the last seven years. The most recent was in December, a microdiscectomy to remove a pressurized disk that was pinching a nerve.
“I would say, unfortunately, it’s very, very unlikely that he returns to be a professional golfer after these injuries,” said Dr. Michael Gardner, chief of orthopedic trauma at Stanford Medical Center. “His age, his multiple back issues, this is going to be a very long road ahead if he chooses to attempt to return to his previous level of golfing.”
Can golf do without the player singularly responsible for its growth?
His watershed victory in the 1997 Masters sent media interest in golf soaring. More than just the first player of Black heritage in a green jacket, he won at a more prolific rate than anyone in history. The timing was impeccable, for the PGA Tour negotiated a TV contract that made prize money spike.
Woods won his first tournament as a 20year-old
in the 1996 Las Vegas Invitational, where the total purse was $1.65 million. At the World Golf Championship this week, first place alone is worth $1.82 million.
Woods made everyone rich. What now? The PGA Tour has been down this road before. Ten years ago, when Woods was still smarting from the sordid revelations of serial adultery and missed three months with more injuries, the PGA Tour negotiated a nine-year television deal with increased rights fees. There was no assurance Woods could get back to the top of his game.
Woods was playing a small schedule even when he was younger and healthier. He has never played more than 21 times in a year on the PGA Tour, which stages events in 46 weeks this season.
He also tends to return to the same courses. But when he plays, and there isn’t a pandemic, no one needs to study TV ratings to measure his impact. Fans often stand six and seven rows deep behind tees and greens to get a look. No other player attracts that kind of attention. The top 10 in the world combined don’t do that.
Woods doesn’t move the needle. Woods is the needle.
“It’s always great when he plays at a tournament
or is out here because it gives that tournament an extra dimension that it usually doesn’t,” four-time major champion Rory McIlroy said. “We were all sort of heading towards that day that Tiger wasn’t going to be a part of the game.”
Woods had only one top-10 finish last year, and that was before the pandemic. Even after golf returned, he waited an additional month to get started. He played only seven times since July and never cracked the top 35. He remains one victory short of his 83rd victory, which would set a PGA Tour record, the one most reasonable for him to break. That was before the crash.
McIlroy already has seen one comeback. He often talks about having lunch one day with Woods in Florida, right after Woods’ fourth back surgery to fuse his lower spine. He saw the pain. And two years later, he saw Woods win the Masters for a fifth time, a 15th major.
“I don’t want to take anything away from what Ben Hogan did after his car crash or any of the other comebacks that athletes have had in other sports, but right now I can’t think of any greater comeback in sports than the journey that he made from that lunch we had in 2017 to winning the Masters a couple years later,” McIlroy said.