--- title: "Supreme Court Rules on Unjust Enrichment in Common Law ✦ Goldwater Droit" description: "The firm’s 2011 commentary on Kerr v. Baranow, joint family ventures, and the ruling’s possible implications for unjust enrichment claims in Quebec." canonical_url: "https://goldwaterdroit.com/en/news-insights/2011/02/supreme-court-rules-unjust-enrichment-common-law-spouses" locale: en meta: "og:description": "The firm’s 2011 commentary on Kerr v. Baranow, joint family ventures, and the ruling’s possible implications for unjust enrichment claims in Quebec." "og:title": "Supreme Court Rules on Unjust Enrichment in Common Law" --- [News & Insights](https://goldwaterdroit.com/en/news-insights) # The Supreme Court Rules on Unjust Enrichment for Common Law Spouses 25 February 2011 1 min read [Family Law](https://goldwaterdroit.com/en/news-insights?topic=family-law) [Marriage & Cohabitation](https://goldwaterdroit.com/en/news-insights?topic=marriage-cohabitation) [Asset & Property Division](https://goldwaterdroit.com/en/news-insights?topic=asset-property-division) [Constitutional & Appellate](https://goldwaterdroit.com/en/news-insights?topic=constitutional-appellate) [Firm News & Announcements](https://goldwaterdroit.com/en/news-insights?category=firm-news-announcements) The Supreme Court of Canada rules that when a domestic relationship is a "joint family venture," there is an unjust enrichment if one party is left with a disproportionate share of the jointly earned assets. Although decided on cases that came from Ontario and British Columbia, there is every reason to believe that Quebec courts will be willing to apply these principles to unjust enrichment cases in Quebec, to provide at least some measure of equity to common law couples while we all wait for the Supreme Court judgment in Eric vs. Lola, or for the legislator to wake up and change the laws! [Kerr v. Baranow, 2011 SCC 10 (CanLII)](http://www.canlii.org/en/ca/scc/doc/2011/2011scc10/2011scc10.html) [**Previous Post**Opinion - The Collapse of 'Ironclad Contracts'](https://goldwaterdroit.com/en/news-insights/2010/12/opinion-the-collapse-of-ironclad-contracts) [**Next Post **The Quebec Child Support Guidelines are held to be discriminatory by the Superior Court](https://goldwaterdroit.com/en/news-insights/2011/06/quebec-child-support-guidelines-are-held-be-discriminatory-superior-court) ## Sitemap See the full [sitemap](/sitemap.md) for all pages.