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→Unmarried couples
A person can make a will making anyone a beneficiary of his or her estate. The nature of the person's relationship with a beneficiary only becomes important if a beneficiary, or a person who thinks he or she ought to be beneficiary, wants to make a claim against the person's estate.
The ''Estate Administration Act'', the law that applies when someone dies without a will, requires that a certain amount of a dead person's estate go to people who qualify as a ''spouse''. Spouse is defined as included including "a common law spouse"; common law spouse is defined as:
<blockquote><tt>(a) a person who is united to another person by a marriage that, although not a legal marriage, is valid by common law, or</tt></blockquote>