Legally, unmarried couples do not enjoy the same rights and responsibilities as married couples. Despite ‘cohabitation’ describing the living arrangements of over five million people in the UK, the law does not meaningfully recognise relationships outside of marriage or civil partnerships.
Cohabiting couples who want legal protection if they break up have two options available to them.
One is to get married or enter a civil partnership. But many people are against marriage for political and social reasons.
This leaves the only other option: entering into a cohabitation agreement.
What is a cohabitation agreement?
Otherwise known as a living together agreement, a cohabitation agreement sets out who owns what and in what proportion. You can use a cohabitation agreement to explain how you will split the valuable things in your relationship if it breaks down. It can also document how you will support your children, beyond your legal requirements to maintain them.
Step 1: Make a list of your assets
The first step is for you and your partner to list all the things that you want the agreement to cover and decide how you would divide them. While there is nothing you must include in a cohabitation agreement, things you may want yours to cover include:
- Any property and assets, whether owned before or bought while you were living together
- How you pay the mortgage, rent, or household bills, and whether this will affect the proportion of the property you will each be entitled to if you separate
- How you will split or allocate joint bank accounts and pensions
- Arrangements for your children
- Whether you will inherit from each other if one of you dies
Step 2: Contact a solicitor
Once you have agreed how you will divide up your assets, contact a solicitor to get your agreement properly drawn up. Your solicitor will want to see proof of what you have included in your agreement, such as:
- Proof of assets, including savings, investments, and pensions
- Title deeds if you own a property
- Proof of any home improvements you have had done to the property, such as receipts for building work
- Proof of your earnings, such as payslips and bank statements
- Birth certificates of your children
When your agreement has been drawn up, your solicitor will probably recommend that you both get independent legal advice before you sign the document. This is to make sure that you are both happy with the agreement and that you are entering into it voluntarily.
If you are both happy with the agreement after taking independent legal advice, you will both need to sign the document to make it legally binding.
Step 3: Keep your cohabitation agreement updated
To keep your cohabitation agreement legally binding, you will need to update it to reflect any significant change in your circumstances. This could include major purchases such as buying a new property, or major life events like the birth of a child or a move abroad.
If you and your partner do decide to get married, you will not have to make any changes to your cohabitation agreement. As a married couple, you will have the rights and legal duties to each other as laid out under marriage law, and your cohabitation agreement would come to a natural end. Nevertheless, you may want to consider making a prenuptial agreement before getting married. A prenuptial agreement gives you the power to control how your assets should be divided between you if you get divorced.
While no one wants to think about a relationship ending, a cohabitation agreement simply gives couples who do not want to get married similar considerations to those in civil partnerships or marriages. If you have been with your partner for a long time and consider yourself ‘common law married’ but feel neither of you has much protection, a cohabitation agreement can be a great option.
