What is the effect of excluding common law spouses from family relief legislation?

There is another goal the legislature may have sought to achieve by excluding common law spouses from family relief legislation. It is not addressed and disposed of by analogy in Rossu v. Taylor. That goal is the policy of non-interference with testamentary intentions except where testators have formalized their relationships thereby accepting the attendant legal obligations. By enacting the Act the legislature has accepted a policy of interference with testamentary intentions for the higher purpose of relieving dependency. There is no rational distinction between interference with the testamentary intentions of married testators and those of unmarried testators. This is particularly so where the types of legal obligations which ground the granting of relief under the Act are being extended in law to members of families of common law relationships.