Common-Law Partner Sponsorship: the 12 month rule, and proving it

What are the common-law requirements in Canada?

To be common-law partners for Canadian immigration, you must not be legally married to each other, both be at least 18, be in a genuine relationship, and have lived together continuously for at least 12 months without any long periods apart.

That is IRCC's own list on its who you can sponsor page (dated 11 September 2026), which adds that your partner can be any gender and must not be inadmissible to Canada. In practice the requirements come down to three things you have to show:

• The relationship is conjugal and genuine: IRCC's complete guide (IMM 5289) asks for proof that you share the same home, support each other financially and emotionally, have children together if you do, and present yourselves in public as a couple.
• You have lived together for a full year: one continuous year, with only short, temporary absences.
• You can document it: IRCC's common-law checklist (IMM 5589) asks for at least two sets of documents showing you live together, such as a joint lease and joint bills.

Two rules from IRCC's instructions to its officers are easy to miss. The year counts only from when you were both at least 18, and it must be complete before IRCC receives your application. The sponsor has their own requirements on top, covered below.

How long do you have to live together to be common-law?

You have to live together for at least 12 consecutive months: IRCC means one continuous year in a conjugal relationship, not separate stretches adding up to a year, and any time apart should have been short and temporary.

IRCC gives family obligations and business travel as examples of short, temporary absences, and sets no number of days. Its officer guidance (Assessing a common-law relationship) says the relationship exists from the day you can show you were living together, so the clock starts on a date your documents support, such as the start of a joint lease. If one of you moved out for a longer time before you reached a year, the safe approach is to count the 12 months again from when you moved back in together.

Once you have completed the year, a later period apart does not automatically end it: the same guidance says a couple who lived together continuously for at least a year can live apart for a time, for work, study or a family illness, and still be common-law if both are continuing the relationship and intend to live together again. The longer the separation, the harder that is to show. The 12-month date calculator above works out your date from your own dates.

What is a common-law partner under Canadian immigration law?

IRCC sets out the definition on its who you can sponsor page. Your common-law partner is a person who:

• is not legally married to you;
• is at least 18 years old;
• can be any gender;
• is in a genuine relationship with you, not one entered into only to obtain permanent resident status;
• has lived with you for at least 12 consecutive months, meaning you have lived together continuously for one year in a conjugal relationship, without any long periods apart, and any time spent away from each other during that year was short and temporary, for example for family obligations or business travel;
• must not be inadmissible to Canada.

Two things in that list do most of the work. The first is the word consecutive. This is not a tally of twelve months spent together across several years; it is one unbroken year. The second is conjugal, which describes the quality of the relationship rather than its length. A conjugal relationship has the hallmarks of a marriage: mutual emotional and physical commitment, some degree of financial interdependence, a shared household and a shared future. Flatmates who split rent for a year are not common-law partners, however long the lease ran.

IRCC adds one sentence that couples often miss: if either partner chooses to end the relationship, IRCC considers the relationship to be over. Common-law status is a question of present fact, not a status you acquire permanently once the twelve months are behind you.

Common-law, married or conjugal: which category are you?

Choosing the wrong partner category is one of the more expensive mistakes in family sponsorship, because it is usually discovered late. All three categories lead to the same outcome, permanent residence for your partner, but they rest on different facts and the evidence does not transfer between them.

The practical sequence is simple. If you are married, you are a spouse. If you are not married but have completed a continuous year living together, you are common-law partners. Only if neither is true does the conjugal partner category come into play, and it carries an extra burden: you have to document the specific barrier that stopped you marrying or living together. Couples sometimes reach for conjugal because it sounds like a catch-all for serious relationships. It is not. If you could realistically have married or moved in together, an officer will expect you to have done so. Engaged couples who have not yet lived together for a year have no separate visa to fall back on either; our fiancé visa guide explains the routes that do exist.

One more distinction is worth drawing because it causes real confusion: a civil union or registered partnership is not the same as a common-law union. If your relationship is registered under the law of the place you live, that registration is useful evidence, but it does not replace the twelve months of cohabitation. IRCC still applies the same factual test.

How do you prove 12 months of continuous cohabitation?

This is the heart of a common-law file. Where a married couple hands over one marriage certificate, you have to build a record. The aim is a continuous spine of documents that places both of your names at the same address across the same twelve months, from independent sources that were created at the time rather than assembled afterwards.

Weight matters more than volume. Six independent documents spanning the twelve months do more than sixty that all come from the same month or the same source. Where a document is in another language, include a translation. Where a gap in the record exists for a mundane reason, a utility account that was only ever in one name, for instance, cover it in a short written explanation rather than leaving the officer to guess.

Beyond the address, IRCC's complete guide (IMM 5289) asks for proof that you support each other financially and emotionally, have children together if you do, and present yourselves in public as a couple, and sponsors and common-law partners complete the IMM 5532 relationship form. The IMM 5409 Statutory Declaration of Common-Law Union is IRCC's form for declaring a common-law union under oath, but the sponsorship checklist and complete guide do not list it as a required form, so follow the checklist the PR Portal gives you. Whatever you file, the dates must match the documents behind them. Our proof of relationship guide covers the related IMM 5532 and the kinds of relationship evidence officers find persuasive, and the spousal sponsorship document checklist sets out what the rest of the package contains.

Who can sponsor a common-law partner?

The sponsor requirements are the same across all three partner categories, and you can read them in full on our family sponsorship eligibility requirements page. IRCC's own eligibility page, dated 23 June 2026, requires that you:

• are at least 18;
• are a Canadian citizen, a permanent resident, or a person registered in Canada under the Indian Act;
• live in Canada. A citizen living abroad must show they plan to live in Canada when their partner becomes a permanent resident, and a permanent resident living abroad cannot sponsor at all;
• commit to supporting your partner by signing an undertaking and sponsorship agreement.

Several situations bar a sponsor, and they are worth checking before you spend anything. You may not be eligible if you were yourself sponsored as a spouse or partner and became a permanent resident less than five years ago; if you signed an undertaking for a previous partner and it has not yet been three years since they became a permanent resident, because you remain financially responsible for them; if an application to sponsor the same person is still undecided; if you are in prison; if you are behind on an immigration loan, a performance bond or court-ordered family support; if you are an undischarged bankrupt; if you are receiving social assistance for a reason other than a disability; or if you have been convicted of a violent or sexual offence, or an offence against a relative causing bodily harm, inside or outside Canada.

Is there an income requirement?

In most cases, no. IRCC states plainly that there is usually no income requirement to sponsor a spouse, partner or dependent child. You sign the undertaking instead. The exception is narrow and specific: an income test applies where the partner you are sponsoring has a dependent child who in turn has dependent children of their own, and in that case the Financial Evaluation Form (IMM 1283) sets out the amount. This is the main structural difference from parent and grandparent sponsorship, where the minimum necessary income test always applies.

What does common-law partner sponsorship cost?

Common-law partners pay the same family-class fees as married spouses, because IRCC treats them as one category for fee purposes. The figures below come from the live IRCC fee list, modified 21 September 2026.

Paying the Right of Permanent Residence Fee upfront is usually the better choice. Deferring it saves nothing overall and leaves a payment outstanding at the point your partner is otherwise ready to be granted permanent residence, which can add a delay right at the end. Our fees page sets out what our own professional work costs, separately from these government fees.

How long does common-law partner sponsorship take?

Common-law applications sit in the same queues as married spouses. IRCC's forward-looking processing times, last updated 9 October 2026, publish these figures for partner sponsorship outside Quebec.

The gap between the two routes is wide enough to matter, and it has been the other way round in the past, so treat the current figures as a snapshot rather than a rule. Your partner's country of residence, biometrics and medical exams all affect the real timeline, and so does completeness: an application returned as incomplete effectively restarts the wait. Our spousal sponsorship processing time guide goes deeper into what actually drives these timelines, and the processing times tool tracks the published figures as they change.

Should you apply inland or outland?

Common-law partners, unlike conjugal partners, have both routes open to them. The choice is not only about where your partner happens to be.

• Inland suits a partner already living with you in Canada on valid status. Your partner can apply for the spousal open work permit once the application is acknowledged, so they can work while it is processed (a partner living in Canada with you can also get one on an outland file).
• Outland suits a partner abroad, and currently carries the shorter published time. It also preserves a right of appeal to the Immigration Appeal Division if the application is refused.

1. 01

   Confirm you have reached twelve months

   Count the continuous period you have lived together and check whether any absence was long enough to break it. This decides your category.

2. 02

   Confirm you can sponsor

   Check your own eligibility and the bars: the five year partner bar, a previous undertaking inside three years, arrears, or a pending application for the same person.

3. 03

   Build the cohabitation record

   Assemble documents covering the whole twelve months from independent sources, with translations where needed.

4. 04

   Complete the forms

   Fill in the sponsorship and permanent residence forms, including the IMM 5532 relationship form, with dates that match your evidence.

5. 05

   Choose inland or outland

   Weigh where your partner is living, whether they need an open work permit, and the right of appeal that outland preserves.

6. 06

   Submit one complete package

   File the sponsorship and permanent residence applications together through the PR Portal, then respond promptly to any request and complete biometrics and medicals.

What goes wrong in common-law applications?

Refusals in this category rarely turn on whether the couple loves each other. They turn on the twelve months and the record. The recurring problems are worth knowing before you submit.

• Filing before the year is complete. Applying at ten or eleven months is the single most common error. The twelve months must be behind you when you apply.
• A gap treated as continuity. A posting abroad, a few months back at a parent's house, or a period where one partner kept a separate home can break the year. An officer who finds it themselves draws a worse conclusion than one you explain upfront.
• A record from one source. A lease and nothing else leaves an officer with a single point of failure. Independent sources corroborate each other.
• Dates that do not line up. Inconsistencies between the dates in your forms and the documents behind them raise genuineness concerns under section 4 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations.
• Choosing the wrong category. Couples who are in fact married sometimes file as common-law, and couples who never lived together sometimes file as common-law rather than conjugal. Both create avoidable problems.

Do you need a consultant for common-law partner sponsorship?

You can apply yourself, and many couples with a clean twelve months and a tidy paper trail do. The cases that benefit most from help are the ones with a complication: a break in cohabitation, a year spent together abroad with records that are hard to explain, a previous undertaking, or an earlier refusal. An honest read on whether you are common-law yet, and on what your evidence actually shows, is the most useful thing to get early.

What we do promise is a careful, complete application and straight answers, so that you know whether you genuinely meet the common-law definition before you spend money on it, and so that the twelve months you have already lived are documented in a way an officer can follow.