If there’s one thing we know in our modern society, it’s that not all marriages are meant to last. As we wrote recently, the union between TV’s “Golden Bachelor” and his hand-picked bride lasted only about three months, despite the lavish televised wedding and intense public scrutiny throughout.
Short relationships are certainly not confined to only those in the public eye; we see them even between the more common folk. But when any marriage is extremely short – e.g. only a month or two – courts still have to grapple with the legal fallout when the couple divorces.
An example of this is seen in the recent Ontario case called Budgell v. Pratt. The couple met in March of 2014 on the dating app called “Plenty of Fish”. The husband was 84 and the wife was 68 at the time. They lived together intermittently in the man’s existing home, and got married in August 2015, a little over a year after they met. None of their family members was present at the wedding, and in fact they did not even invite any of their adult children to attend.
Unfortunately they separated only 75 days after the ceremony – and that included two brief periods of separation. Their relationship was tumultuous: On the final separation for example, the husband was taken to hospital by ambulance for a head injury he said he suffered during an assault by the wife. The wife was charged with assault, and entered into a peace bond to stay away from him. After that, they never saw each other again.
The husband died in October 2019, and left three different Wills. In the earliest one, dated May 2014 (i.e. two months after they met), the husband left his home to the wife. His residence counted as their matrimonial home at the time. But in his two later Wills (2016 and 2018), the husband left the wife nothing, and instead specified that his adult children should inherit his whole estate.
Six months after the husband died, the wife applied for an order:
- Declaring those final two Wills invalid; and
- Equalizing the husband’s Net Family Property under the Family Law Act (FLA), and granting her at least half the value of his home.
The court dismissed both of the wife’s claims.
For one thing, the wife’s equalization claim was brought too late. Under limitations legislation, she had six months after the husband’s death to elect to take under his Will or elect to an equalization of the Net Family Property under the FLA. Having failed to make an election in time, the wife was deemed by legislation to take under the Will (if at all).
In any case, giving her full equalization after only 75 days’ marriage would amount to an “unjustifiable windfall and would shock the conscience of the court.” The wife had lived in the husband’s home only intermittently during an 18-month period, which included those 75 days of marital non-bliss. As compared to her pre-marriage lifestyle, nothing had really changed or been prejudiced, to the point where she deserved full equalization. This was an ideal scenario for applying section 5(6)(e) of the FLA, which covers marriages lasting less than five years and allows the court to vary an equalization amount where it would otherwise be unconscionable.
(As an aside, the court added that even if it was inclined to order any equalization, it would have reduced it to zero, to set off the fact that the wife had taken the husband’s dog and car when she left his home, never to return. She kept both for at least three years, which in the court’s view offset the value of any equalization to which she might notionally be entitled).
Finally, the court also refused to declare invalid the husband’s 2018 Will, in which he left everything to his adult children. There was no suspicion of undue influence from them, nor any irregularity in terms of the Will being signed and witnessed.
For the full text of the decision, see:
Budgell v. Pratt et. al., 2024 ONSC 2645 (CanLII), <https://canlii.ca/t/k4h0v>
