Legal marital status of person

Status: This standard was approved as a departmental standard on July 31, 2026.

Definition

Legal marital status refers to the marital status of the person under the law. Common-law unions are not taken into account.

All persons aged 14 and under are considered to have never married. For Quebec residents, registered civil unions should be considered marriages. Same-sex marriage has been legal in all provinces and territories of Canada since 2005.

Person refers to an individual and is the unit of analysis for most social statistics programs.

Conformity to relevant internationally recognized standards

This standard is broadly compatible with the recommendations for censuses contained in the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe Conference of European Statisticians (UNECE-CES) "Recommendations for the 2030 Round of Population and Housing Censuses", 2025.

The UNECE-CES recommendations include the collection of information on the legal marital status for persons aged 15 and over. Further, the UNECE-CES recommendations include (section 15.4) the distinction of the population by legal marital status, specifically: never married, married, divorced and not remarried, and widowed and not remarried. The UNECE-CES recommendations also note that a separate category for "legally separated" may be necessary where the legislation includes provisions for this status, as distinct from "married" or "divorced."

Classifications

Additional information

See:

Relation to previous version

  • Legal marital status of person July 31, 2026 to current

    Minor wording revisions have been made to the definition of the concept "legal marital status". The category names and the definitions of the classification have been modified.

  • Legal marital status of person May 26, 2021 to July 30, 2026

    The definition of legal marital status has been slightly modified. The terminology used in the classification has been modified in French from 'partenaire en union libre' to 'conjoint de fait'.

  • Legal marital status of person October 19, 2015 to May 25, 2021

    The category label "Married (and not separated)" has been changed to "Married" and "Single" has been changed to "Never married." Some definitions have been revised for clarity, but no essential changes have been made.

  • Legal marital status of person October 20, 2008 to October 18, 2015

    Married (and not separated) includes both opposite and same sex couples, which was not the case in the previous standard. The labels and definitions of all other categories now state that those living common law are included. This is a clarification, not a change.

  • Legal marital status July 15, 1998 to October 19, 2008
Date modified: