Should I Background Check My Fiance? An Ontario PI's Guide

Deciding whether you should background check your fiance is, in Ontario, a question with both a legal and a relational dimension. Under the Private Security and Investigative Services Act, 2005, any person who conducts a premarital background investigation for remuneration requires a valid provincial licence — and the investigation itself must stay within the publicly available information framework set by federal privacy law.

Canada’s Anti-Fraud Centre reported CAD $58.4 million in romance fraud losses in 2024 — a figure that captures only 5 to 10 percent of actual losses, since most victims never report. This post explains what the law permits a licensed PI to investigate, which situations objectively warrant a check, how the process unfolds, and whether the resulting report can be used in Ontario family court if circumstances change.

Is running a background check on your fiance a breach of trust

The trust question is a relational one — the law answers the legal one first. Gathering publicly available information about a prospective spouse does not require their knowledge or consent under Canada’s federal privacy law.

Section 7(1)(d) of the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) permits collection of publicly available information without consent when that information falls within the categories specified in the Regulations Specifying Publicly Available Information, SOR/2001-7. Those categories cover five types: telephone and business directories, professional or business registries, public registries collected under statutory authority, publicly available court and tribunal records, and publications to which the individual contributed. A licensed PI conducting a premarital investigation operates entirely within these categories.

The trust question, then, is separate from legality. Whether you feel a pre-marriage investigation signals distrust — and whether you tell your partner you retained a PI — is a decision you make. The law does not require disclosure.

What the law does not permit is more significant than what it permits. A PI cannot lawfully place recording devices in your partner’s home, intercept their text messages or calls, or access their email or social accounts. Section 184(1) of the Criminal Code of Canada makes it an indictable offence — punishable by up to five years’ imprisonment — to intercept a private communication by any electromagnetic, acoustic, or mechanical device without the consent of a party. Any investigation that crosses into covert interception is not just legally problematic for the PI; it could expose the client to liability as well.

Verifying a partner’s identity and professional background before marriage is a proportionate response to documented risk. Canada’s official romance fraud reporting represents only a fraction of actual losses — for the year-over-year Canadian breakdown, see our compilation of romance scam statistics.

What a premarital background check does — and does not — cover

A premarital background investigation is a structured inquiry into a prospective spouse’s publicly available records, court history, and professional credentials, conducted before marriage to verify that the person is who they represent themselves to be. In Ontario, conducting such an investigation for remuneration — including being retained by a family member or adviser on behalf of the requesting party — requires a valid licence issued under the Private Security and Investigative Services Act, 2005 s. 6.

A licensed PI’s premarital investigation does not include accessing private communications, sealed court records, or juvenile records, and it cannot obtain the full contents of a police record check without the subject’s written consent — that access is governed by the Police Record Checks Reform Act, 2015 (PRCRA), which requires written authorization from the subject before a police service may disclose to any third party.

What a PSISA-licensed Ontario PI’s premarital investigation can draw on:

• Publicly available court and tribunal records — civil judgments, criminal findings of record, family court orders that are publicly filed
• Professional licensing and credential registries — law society rolls, medical college registers, regulated professional directories
• Ontario Business Registry and federal corporate registries — business associations, directorships, shareholder filings, dissolved companies
• Bankruptcy and insolvency records through the Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy’s public register
• Open-source and social media review of publicly available profiles and published content
• Identity confirmation against public government publications and records

What a licensed PI cannot access without the subject’s written consent or a separate lawful authority:

• Full PRCRA police record check or vulnerable sector check
• Private communications — text messages, emails, phone calls, or device content
• Private financial account records or confidential credit bureau reports
• Any record that is sealed, expunged, or subject to a court-ordered publication ban

What law in Ontario governs premarital background investigations

Three overlapping legal frameworks govern what a licensed PI can and cannot do in a premarital background investigation in Ontario.

First, the Private Security and Investigative Services Act, 2005 (PSISA) establishes the licensing requirement. Any person conducting investigative services for remuneration without a valid provincial licence commits an offence under s. 6. The penalty for an individual is a fine of up to $25,000 and/or imprisonment for up to one year under s. 45(1). For a corporation, the fine reaches $250,000. A PSISA licence is not optional — it is the baseline threshold for any Ontario PI conducting a premarital investigation.

Second, federal PIPEDA governs what personal information a PI can collect. Section 7(1)(d) permits collection of publicly available information specified in SOR/2001-7 without the subject’s consent. Personal information outside those five categories requires consent or another lawful authority. A premarital investigation confined to the SOR/2001-7 categories is lawful without disclosure to the subject.

Third, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada’s 2009 Guidance on Covert Video Surveillance in the Private Sector establishes that covert surveillance must meet a four-part test to comply with PIPEDA. The investigation must have a demonstrable legitimate purpose, not mere suspicion. It must weigh the individual’s privacy interest against the investigative need proportionately. It must demonstrate that less invasive alternatives were considered. And collection must be limited to what is necessary to fulfill the identified purpose. This four-part test applies in personal-relationship investigations just as it does in commercial contexts.

A licensed PI operating within PSISA, PIPEDA, and the OPC’s surveillance guidance is conducting a lawful investigation. A person conducting the same inquiry without a PSISA licence, or using methods that exceed the PIPEDA publicly-available-information categories, is not.

Situations where a premarital background check is objectively warranted

Not every engagement warrants a premarital investigation. Engagement without suspicion and a clear, consistent personal history does not make one necessary. The following situations are objectively warranted:

• A partner with an inconsistent or unverifiable professional history — claimed credentials, licences, or designations that do not appear in the relevant registry
• A short-courtship relationship that moved quickly to financial or residential entanglement — joint accounts, property purchases, or spousal-sponsorship applications proceeding on the partner’s representations
• A partner met online, at distance, or through a third-party introducer, where identity verification is limited to self-report
• Concern about a prior marriage, undisclosed children, or hidden litigation — situations where the partner’s account of their past has changed or cannot be confirmed
• Any circumstance involving significant shared financial decisions where those decisions depend on the accuracy of the partner’s representations about their background, assets, or liabilities

When a partner is presenting a fabricated or borrowed identity, the legal exposure can be significant. If they are using another real person’s identity information, sections 402.2 and 403 of the Criminal Code apply. Section 402.2 — identity theft, defined as obtaining another person’s identity information with intent to commit fraud or deceit — carries a maximum of five years on indictment. Section 403 — identity fraud, defined as fraudulently personating another person to gain advantage or cause disadvantage — carries a maximum of ten years. These provisions require the use of another person’s actual identity information, not merely overstating one’s own credentials. That distinction matters, but the underlying deception is material to any decision about marriage.

The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre recorded 9,683 identity fraud reports in 2024 — the highest volume of any single fraud type that year. For the full Canadian picture on identity misrepresentation and who faces the highest risk, see our identity theft statistics Canada compilation.

How a licensed PI conducts a premarital background check in Ontario

A PSISA-licensed Ontario PI conducting a premarital background investigation works within the publicly available information framework established by PIPEDA s. 7(1)(d) and SOR/2001-7. The following are the investigative steps a licensed PI can lawfully take:

1. Court and tribunal record searches — searching publicly available civil judgments, criminal findings of record, and family court orders that have been publicly filed in Ontario and federal courts
2. Professional licensing and credential verification — checking law society rolls, medical college registers, regulated professional directories, and other statutory credential registries to confirm whether claimed designations are active and in good standing
3. Ontario Business Registry and corporate registry searches — identifying business associations, directorships, officer appointments, and dissolved-company filings in Ontario and at the federal level through Corporations Canada
4. Bankruptcy and insolvency records — searching the Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy’s public register for proposals, assignments, and discharge history
5. Open-source and social media investigation — reviewing publicly available profiles, published content, and open-source digital footprint, consistent with social media and internet investigation methods that remain within the PIPEDA publicly-available-information categories
6. Identity confirmation — cross-referencing claimed personal details against public government publications, business directories, and published records to identify discrepancies between representation and public record

What the PI cannot do: obtain a full PRCRA police record check without the subject’s written consent; intercept private communications under Criminal Code s. 184(1); access any private account, device, or non-public record; or conduct surveillance that exceeds the OPC’s four-part proportionality test.

The output of a licensed premarital investigation is a written, organized report compiled from the sources above. Discreet Investigations typically completes a premarital background investigation within a seven-to-ten business day window. The report is formatted so that your solicitor can review it and, if the relationship proceeds to litigation, introduce it as a documentary exhibit.

Is a premarital background check report admissible in Ontario family court

A written premarital background check report produced by a PSISA-licensed PI is a documentary record. If the matter proceeds to family litigation, the report would be admitted as an electronic document under the Canada Evidence Act ss. 31.1–31.3.

Section 31.1 requires the party seeking admission to prove authenticity — specifically, evidence capable of supporting a finding that the document is what it is purported to be. A PI’s report, compiled contemporaneously from publicly available sources with a clear methodology, satisfies this standard. Section 31.2 confirms that printouts of electronic documents satisfy the best evidence rule where the printout has been acted on, relied on, or used as a record. Section 31.3 establishes a presumption of system integrity for records produced in the ordinary course of business by a neutral third party. A professional investigative firm’s contemporaneous report meets this standard.

The report does not create admissibility obstacles specific to its subject matter. It is a compilation of publicly available records, and publicly available court records, registry entries, and professional licence records are themselves admissible documents.

Procedurally, the Family Law Rules, O. Reg. 114/99 require a party relying on a documentary exhibit to provide the document to the other party in advance and be prepared to speak to its provenance. A PI may be required to swear an affidavit confirming methodology and sources, or to attend and be cross-examined on the report. Nothing in the Family Law Rules categorically excludes background investigation reports. Counsel in Ontario family matters routinely rely on PI evidence in proceedings involving undisclosed assets, fraudulent representation, and child-protection concerns.

The sibling post What Premarital Background Checks Reveal in Ontario addresses in more detail which specific records a licensed PI can reach and how findings are documented for family-law purposes.

What this means for you: making the decision with a licensed PI

The decision to run a premarital background check on your prospective partner is yours to make. The law does not require it, and a clean result changes nothing about the relationship. What a licensed investigation does is replace unverified suspicion — or unexamined trust — with documented, sourceable findings.

At Discreet Investigations, our premarital background investigations are conducted by PSISA-licensed investigators and draw exclusively on publicly available records permitted under PIPEDA and SOR/2001-7. We do not access private accounts, intercept communications, or obtain police record checks without your partner’s written consent. Every investigation we conduct stays within the PIPEDA publicly-available-information framework and the Criminal Code’s interception prohibition.

The report we produce is a written, organized compilation of publicly available records — court filings, registry searches, professional credential verification, open-source identity confirmation — formatted so that your solicitor can review it and, if circumstances change, introduce it as a documentary exhibit under the Canada Evidence Act ss. 31.1–31.3. Most clients never use the report in court. Most clients are glad they have it.

To discuss whether a premarital background check fits your situation, call +1 (888) 680-0036 or visit our premarital background check service page.

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