In what circumstances will a husband and wife have to divide the assets of their jointly owned home?

British Columbia, Canada


The following excerpt is from Deleeuw v. Deleeuw, 1977 CanLII 404 (BC CA):

In MacLeod v. MacLeod Meredith J. was dealing with a situation where both parties sought relief pursuant to the provisions of s. 8 of The Family Relations Act. He said: “What I do consider relevant is the fact that although the plaintiff [husband] brought into the marriage some property from which the assets ultimately acquired to some extent derived, in the main the creation of those assets must be taken to have been by virtue of the joint efforts of the plaintiff and the defendant: the plaintiff for the most part earned the money, and he worked hard at his improvement of both properties; the defendant devoted her efforts in large part to the five children, joint assets, as it were, of incomparable value. “So I think little or no rational distinction can be drawn between the respective contributions of the husband and the wife to the acquisition of the two properties. I think their contribution should be regarded as equal and that the assets should, so far as is possible, be divided equally.”

Subsequently, in Nedelak v. Nedelak, Skipp L.J.S.C. said: “A distinction has sometimes been made between a wife who has actually contributed to the estate of the husband in the sense of something more than the normal functions of a wife and mother, including working for wages which were invested in the property, a farm wife assisting in pulling stumps, driving a tractor or other manual work, and involvement in a business which may have been carried on by the husband with accounting or administrative contributions. “Surely a wife who has been faithful to her duties to a marriage, a person sometimes described as an ordinary housewife, and who has cared for her children and husband throughout the normal vicissitudes of marriage can be ‘entitled to property’. And here I add the usual disclaimer that each case must be decided on its own facts. To express it negatively a wife is not a person not entitled to property within the meaning of section 8 because she cannot be proved to have made a contribution over and above her normal duties as a housewife.”

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