Justice Waylaid

It wasn't all that long ago when women in common-law relationships received scant recognition from the courts when assets were divided upon separation. For that matter it hasn't been all that long in Canada when women in a dissolved marriage were left with nothing for themselves. Society seemed to feel that the man had assembled all the goods they owned as a married couple, and that women, holding down the fort at home, had done nothing to earn a division of property.

In the mid-1970s an Alberta farm wife, Irene Murdoch, was vindicated in her assertion that her equity in the farm owned under her husband's name should recognize her part in allowing the couple to accumulate goods that should be fairly distributed to both, on divorce. The courts thought otherwise,k despite Supreme Court Justice Bora Laskin writing his dissent of their finding, which eventually helped bring changes to family law in Canada, and ended with Irene Murdoch receiving a fair settlement. <sup>[1]

That didn't help another woman in 1986 who was in a common-law relationship of long standing. The pair kept a successful apiary; their legal case known as "The beekeeper case". Rosa Becker and her common-law husband Lothar Pettkus didn't see eye-to-eye on what was owing her with the dissolution of their relationship after 20 years together. 

She fought to see justice done for herself, but it was denied her. She did eventually receive a $68,000 settlement, but the lawyer who represented her interests took it entirely as his entitled fee. Because she and her common-law husband had built their bee-keeping business together; money came from her bank account, title was in his name. She felt entitled to half the business The court case stretched out over a dozen contentious years of little satisfaction to her. 

The Supreme Court of Canada in 1980 ruled that she was entitled to $150,000. Pettkus manipulated proceedings, insisting he had no money, so he got a court-appointed lawyer on the public dime and she had to hire her own lawyer. The settlement was whittled down to $68,000, and nothing accrued to Rose Becker. Her health was impacted, she was poverty-stricken and in despair she killed herself with a shotgun at age 62 in 1986.

Lothar Pettkus later married, and won a $200,000 lottery with his wife which they invested back into the business. That marriage lasted 30 years. Pettkus looked for a lawyer to look take care of his divorce settlement, telling the lawyer he was by then a millionaire and boasting to him that he had successfully argued Rosa's settlement down years ago through the useful expedient of hiding his assets. Which had entitled him to Legal Aid, denied her.

Pettkus is now 80, and appearing in court disputed his divorce. His lawyer, Ottawa-based Samuel Schwisberg, was fascinated by what he learned about his client and the previous court case. So he wrote a book about what he discovered by studying court transcripts, and by the things that his client had informed him about. He's titled his manuscript Swarm Before Me, and is looking for a publisher.

It's a truly unsavoury story about a selfish man without a conscience who led a court to believe that he had been taken advantage of by an older woman hoping to gain materially by associating herself with a man who was prepared to provide for her. Her industrious efforts at helping to make the business the success it was, was overlooked in a classic instance of male empowerment.</sup>