CBC Reports on Fraudulent Marriage

CBC has reported today on the case of a Victoria woman who says that her husband duped her into marrying him just so he could immigrate to Canada. Although people enter into sham marriages all the time, it is always tragic when the sham is known only to one of the spouses.

When an innocent spouse has suffered real harm as a result of the deception, however, the court is usually happy to try to redress those wrongs. In the case of Raju v. Kumar, for example, a 2006 case of our Supreme Court, the court awarded damages to compensate the innocent spouse for her

"hurt feelings, humiliation, inconvenience and postponement of the opportunity to marry another man while she was still capable of bearing children"

as a result of the husband's misrepresentations which induced her to marry him.