House mate / common law

[battler101]

Hi everyone,

I am from NZ and arrived in Canada December 2017. I was starting to talk a lot/grow closer to a friend of mine back home and she eventually moved to Canada in October 2018. She moved into my flat and had her own room / living expenses. We started dating and officially moved into a room together / signed a lease together in February 2019.

I have applied for permanent residency under CEC and applied as single. I am aware I will need to update CIC of my marital status when we become common law. Would this be in February?
We don't have any kind of proof to show that we were common law any earlier than this as we had no lease etc and had seperate room arrangements. I am worried about misrepresentation. February is the earliest we could show proof of common law and the earliest I would say things were serious. Would our address history with the same addresses be considered common law from October?

I read this below on the CIC website so thinking officially common law would be February?
"In the immigration context, a common-law partnership means that a couple have lived together for at least one year in a conjugal relationship [R1(1)]. A common-law relationship exists from the day on which two individuals can provide evidence to support their cohabitation in a conjugal relationship. The onus is on the applicant to prove that they have been living common-law for at least one year before an application is received at CPC-M.

Can any one shed some insight if they have been in a similar situation or any advice is appreciated!

 

[canuck_in_uk]

Hi everyone,

I am from NZ and arrived in Canada December 2017. I was starting to talk a lot/grow closer to a friend of mine back home and she eventually moved to Canada in October 2018. She moved into my flat and had her own room / living expenses. We started dating and officially moved into a room together / signed a lease together in February 2019.

I have applied for permanent residency under CEC and applied as single. I am aware I will need to update CIC of my marital status when we become common law. Would this be in February?
We don't have any kind of proof to show that we were common law any earlier than this as we had no lease etc and had seperate room arrangements. I am worried about misrepresentation. February is the earliest we could show proof of common law and the earliest I would say things were serious. Would our address history with the same addresses be considered common law from October?

I read this below on the CIC website so thinking officially common law would be February?
"In the immigration context, a common-law partnership means that a couple have lived together for at least one year in a conjugal relationship [R1(1)]. A common-law relationship exists from the day on which two individuals can provide evidence to support their cohabitation in a conjugal relationship. The onus is on the applicant to prove that they have been living common-law for at least one year before an application is received at CPC-M.

Can any one shed some insight if they have been in a similar situation or any advice is appreciated!

Technically, if you only got together in February, yes, you will be common-law in February.

However, you must both have your own address proofs from October onward, bank statements, payslips, leases etc. Common-law proofs don't have to be in the same name.

 

[battler101]

So if two people are living in same place but different rooms and had their expenses , bills, accounts, and other stuff different considered as common law? Is living roommates considered common law?

Yeah these are my thoughts...house mates wouldn't be considered common law. I guess from february onward it is only commonlaw

 

[canuck_in_uk]

So if two people are living in same place but different rooms and had their expenses , bills, accounts, and other stuff different considered as common law? Is living roommates considered common law?

The thing is, IRCC generally doesn't believe when people in a relationship say that they were only roommates when they have a shared address. There is usually nothing to prove that they were in separate rooms or not in a relationship. There have been many cases where people got PR as single, sponsored partners with the same address history and received Procedural Fairness letters asking why their common-law partner wasn't included in their original PR app.

It is a very fine line. In OP's case, the potential complication could be if they submitted their PR after October and IRCC questions if they were already common-law when the app was submitted, in which case CRS changes would have to be considered.