Cohabitation Agreements

What a Cohabitation Agreement Covers

A cohabitation agreement, also called a living together agreement, is a written contract between two people who share a home without marrying or forming a civil partnership.

Most agreements deal with:

• the property: who owns it, in what shares, and how a deposit, gift or inheritance is treated
• the mortgage or rent, council tax, utilities and insurance, and who pays which share
• money one of you puts into building work or an extension
• joint accounts, savings, cars, pets and household contents
• debts in one name that the other helps to service
• what notice each of you gives, and how the home is sold, bought out or transferred

An agreement can only affect the beneficial shares in a home if it says so in wording that satisfies the formalities for a declaration of trust, so where a home is involved we record the shares in a declaration of trust signed at the same time, which keeps the shares and the day to day terms in separate documents. How the property is owned is also recorded at HM Land Registry.

Where the Law Leaves Unmarried Couples

There is no legal status of common law marriage in England and Wales, however long a couple have lived together and whether or not they have children. The Ministry of Justice reported in its 2026 consultation that 47 per cent of people in England and Wales believe such a status exists.

When a marriage or civil partnership ends, the court has a broad statutory power to reallocate property, income and pensions. When cohabitants separate there is no equivalent framework. Property disputes between cohabiting partners are decided under the Trusts of Land and Appointment of Trustees Act 1996, on trust law principles, and a civil court hearing a TOLATA claim cannot award maintenance, divide a pension or order a lump sum payment.

Under section 14 of that Act a trustee of the land, or a person with an interest in property held on a trust of land, can ask the court to declare what each of you owns or to make orders about the home. The matters section 15 tells the court to have regard to include the intentions of those who created the trust, which is why a property dispute between unmarried partners is easier to answer when those intentions were written down at the start.

This area of law may change. The Ministry of Justice consulted on a statutory framework for eligible cohabitants on separation, and on inheritance when a cohabitant dies, in A fairer end to relationships, which ran from 5 June 2026 to 14 August 2026. It has closed and no response has been published, so the law set out here is the law as it stands.

What an Agreement Cannot Decide

Child maintenance can be agreed between you, but it cannot be locked into this agreement. The Child Support Act 1991 lets parents make a maintenance agreement, but it does not prevent either of you, or anyone else, from applying for a maintenance calculation, and a term purporting to restrict that right is void. We advise on a child maintenance arrangement alongside the agreement rather than inside it.

You can agree arrangements for your children between you, but an agreement cannot bind a court. Where a court determines a question about a child's upbringing the child's welfare is its paramount consideration, and it will not make an order unless doing so would be better for the child than making none. Parental responsibility is not something you can trade: a person who has it may not surrender or transfer any part of it, although they can arrange for some of it to be met by someone else on their behalf, and they remain answerable if it is not met. Who a child lives with and how they spend time with each parent is dealt with through child arrangements orders; an unmarried father or second parent should also read our pages on parental responsibility and children of unmarried parents.

A parent, guardian or special guardian, or a person named in a child arrangements order as someone the child lives with, can apply for financial provision for a child under Schedule 1 of the Children Act 1989, and what you wrote down is one of the circumstances the court weighs rather than the answer. Schedule 1 claims are handled separately.

An agreement also passes nothing on death. A surviving cohabitant is excluded from the intestacy rules, so however long you lived together, you do not automatically inherit from a partner who dies without a will. A partner who lived in the same household as the deceased as if they were a married couple or civil partners throughout the two years ending immediately before the death, or who was being maintained by them, can apply under the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975. That is a claim to bring, not an entitlement, and under section 4 of that Act it cannot be made more than six months after representation is first taken out unless the court gives permission, so advice is needed quickly. Making a will alongside the agreement is the straightforward answer.

Making an Agreement That Holds Up

A cohabitation agreement is a private contract, and the Ministry of Justice puts it plainly: agreements of this kind are not automatically legally binding, and how far they can be enforced depends on how they are drafted.

The wording also has to satisfy property law. Under section 53 of the Law of Property Act 1925, a declaration of trust about land must be recorded in writing and signed by a person able to declare the trust, and a transfer of an existing beneficial interest must be in writing signed by the person giving it up. Recitals inside an agreement are no substitute. Writing is not the only route to a share: section 53 does not affect resulting, implied or constructive trusts, so a partner who has paid towards a home in the other's name may still have an interest, just far harder to prove than a signed declaration.

How you hold the property between you matters just as much, and that is a question about the beneficial ownership rather than the name on the legal title. Joint tenants have equal rights to the whole property, and a share passes automatically to the other owner on death and cannot be left by will. Tenants in common can hold different shares, and a share can be left by will instead of passing automatically. Couples who put in unequal amounts usually want the second of those.

What tends to make an agreement stand:

• each of you takes your own legal advice, from a different solicitor, and that advice is recorded
• you exchange written details of income, savings, debts, property and pensions before signing
• it is signed and dated, usually as a deed, and each of you keeps an original
• it is signed in good time before a purchase or a move, not on the day
• neither of you is under pressure or signing without understanding it
• it is reviewed when a child arrives, when you remortgage and when one of you inherits

How the Process Works

1. A first meeting where we set out what each of you owns and contributes, and what the agreement needs to achieve.
2. We advise you on where you would stand today without an agreement, so you can both see what it changes.
3. You exchange written financial disclosure covering income, savings, debts, the property and any pension.
4. We draft the agreement and, where a property is involved, a matching declaration of trust for the beneficial shares.
5. Your partner takes independent advice and the wording is settled between the two solicitors.
6. You both sign as a deed, we tell you what needs to be recorded at HM Land Registry, and we diarise a review.

When Legal Advice Is Especially Important

Advice matters most where:

• one of you owns the home and the other pays towards the mortgage or the building work
• a deposit came from a parent, a gift or an inheritance and nobody recorded what it was
• one of you is giving up work or reducing hours to care for a child
• there is a business, a pension or a property from an earlier relationship involved
• you have been together for years and made contributions nobody wrote down
• you are already separating, which our page on separation for unmarried couples covers

An agreement signed under pressure is worth little and can be challenged. If you feel unsafe or controlled at home, the police can be reached on 999 in an emergency and the National Domestic Abuse Helpline on 0808 2000 247.

How RakLAW Solicitors Can Help

We prepare cohabitation agreements and declarations of trust from our office at 42 Shad Thames in Southwark, a short walk from Tower Bridge. RakLAW Solicitors was founded by solicitor Rakesh Prajapati. We act for one of you and work with your partner's solicitor, so each has advice of their own.

Related work sits across our unmarried couples and cohabitation pages, and couples who are marrying may want a prenuptial agreement instead.

RakLAW does not offer legal aid and is privately funded. Our charges are on the family law fees page, court fees are on the GOV.UK court and tribunal fees page with help paying court and tribunal fees for those who qualify, and the first 15 minutes of a consultation are free. Call 0203 345 2000 or book an appointment.