Earnings registered under the Québec Pension Plan

The family patrimony includes all earnings registered during the marriage or civil union under:

• the Québec Pension Plan;
• equivalent programs, such as the Canada Pension Plan.

The earnings will be automatically divided between you and your spouse if:

• the judgment granting your divorce or legal separation or the annulment of your marriage took effect after June 30, 1989;
• a judgment has granted the dissolution or annulment of your civil union.

Partition cannot deprive either spouse of more than 50% of the rights accrued in his or her pension plan.

Spouses who lived together in a de facto union before their marriage or civil union

On certain conditions, you and your spouse can partition the earnings registered while you were in a de facto union before your marriage or civil union.

You must agree on how the earnings are to be partitioned, and then file a joint application with Retraite Québec.

Either spouse can renounce the partition of earnings. The renunciation must be mentioned in a court judgment or notarized agreement.

Before renouncing the partition of earnings, you can ask Retraite Québec for a simulated partition of employment earnings  to find out if partition is advantageous for you. There is no charge for this service.

If your marriage or civil union is dissolved after one of the spouses dies, registered earnings are excluded from the family patrimony.

Registered earnings are also excluded if the pension plan:

• is established or governed by statute, and;
• provides for death benefits to be paid to the surviving spouse.

On application, the court may decide that registered earnings will not be divided equally, for example if:

• the marriage or civil union was of short duration;
• one of the spouses acted in bad faith;
• one of the spouses squandered the couple’s property.