Nuptial patterns in Québec differ from the rest of Canada.
A common-law union occurs when two people live together in a conjugal relationship, generally for at least a year (or more depending on the province they reside in).
Common-law couples in Canada have many of the same legal, parental and financial rights and obligations as married couples.
Age of newlyweds is also a key factor for first marriage dissolution.
Teens who marry face a marriage dissolution risk that is almost double that of individuals who marry between the ages of 25 and 29, and people who wait until their mid-30s or later who have a 43 per cent lower risk.
At the beginning of the 21st century, 76 per cent of marriage ceremonies were religious.
In 2000, the census indicated a slight rise in the marriage rate, five for every 1,000 people, which was attributed to couples choosing to marry at the start of the new millennium.After the millennium the marriage rate fell to 4.7 marriages per 1,000 people (compared to 10.9 in the 1940s), continuing the trend of a declining rate.Married couples are still the predominant family structure.In 2011, for the first time in Canadian history, there were also more single-person households than couple households with children, a trend that was again reflected in the 2016 census.Over the last century, marriage rates have fluctuated and often corresponded with historical events.In 1981 (the first year that census data on common-law couples was collected), such unions accounted for 6.3 per cent of all families in Canada.