A Growing Trend for Cohabiting Families

As expected, the most common type of family is married or civil partner couple families and the second largest is the cohabiting (unmarried) family; there are more than 3.3 million cohabiting families in the UK. 　

Unfortunately unlike married couples, cohabiting couples do not have the same legal rights around finances, property and children. If you are cohabiting and want to protect your position in certain areas of your relationship with your partner, you can enter into a cohabitation agreement. A cohabitation agreement is a legal document between cohabiting couples which sets out arrangements for finances, property and children whilst living together, in the event of a separation, one becomes ill or dies.

If however your relationship has already broken down and there is no cohabitation agreement in place, then disputes regarding your interests in a property are determined in accordance with strict principles of property and trust law which can be complex. The law does not take account of the relationship because the 'common law' wife or husband does not exist and claims by cohabiting couples are very limited in comparison with spouses or civil partners.

If you wish to enter into a cohabitation agreement or you are going through a dispute with your former partner then please contact our family team for more details or download our top 10 tips for cohabitation planning...

Download our Cohabitation Planning Top Tips
'10 Top Tips: Living Together / Cohabitation Planning'
by clicking on the cover.  >>>