[영문]In 1997 the U.S. state of Hawaii passed an Act Relating to Unmarried Couples.1 This law establishes a registration system in which two people who are legally unable to marry for reasons ranging from their being same?sex partners to their being blood relations can agree to share a prescribed set of benefits and decision?making authority that had previously been reserved for married couples. These benefits include hospital visitation and health care decision?making rights, the right to hold property as tenants by entirety (automatic right of inheritance for the surviving partner), and the right to sue for wrongful death. Hawaii’s legislation was the first in North America to recognize the legitimacy of nonconjugal relationships. In 2002, the Canadian province of Alberta passed the Adult Interdependent Relationships Act (AIRA).2 The AIRA entitles two unmarried adults to form a contract to share most of the benefits and obligations that accrue through marriage, but in addition it enables the provincial state to impose (or ascribe) these benefits and obligations on two adults who have substantially shared their lives for at least three years. A determination of conjugality, or a marriage?like relationship, is not required for this imposition of status to occur, nor is the existence of an explicit contract unless the partners are blood relations. To date, this is the only legislation in Canada that extends relationship status to nonconjugal partners.