Parental union in Quebec: a model for recognizing cohabitants?

Abstract This paper introduces an international readership to an innovative policy response to cohabitation. Under a law passed in 2024 by the Canadian province of Quebec, unmarried cohabitants who become parents of the same child will automatically enter a ‘parental union.’ The legislature intended parental union to protect children without marrying adults by force. This new relationship form entails some of marriage’s effects, although it does not change the spouses’ civil status. The paper draws out the design choices underlying this intriguing middle ground between Quebec’s robust marriage regime and its laissez-faire approach to cohabitation. Although the parental union calls for limited sharing and contemplates a remedy for unjust enrichment between the spouses, it has no measures founded in solidarity or redressing need. It does not apply to cohabitants whose common children were born before the end of June 2025. Nor does this reform do anything for the many cohabitants who are not legal parents to the same child. Readers will judge the extent to which this reform merits imitation for the balance it strikes between protection of the vulnerable, compensation for contributions, and autonomy.