How to make a living together agreement

If you are living with your partner (or are about to move in) and aren’t married or in a civil partnership, this guide is for you. It explains why having a living together agreement is a brilliant way to protect yourself and your partner, and then shows you how to do it - quickly and easily. All cohabiting couples should make one.

It only takes most people an evening to discuss everything and fifteen minutes to write using the agreement template in the extended guide. Alternatively, you can use the ‘What to put in your cohabitation agreement checklist’ (below) to discuss all the issues with your partner, note down your agreements, and take it to a solicitor to have drawn up into a living together agreement or Deed. 

There are other living together agreement or cohabitation agreement packs available but this is the easiest to use and is completely flexible so that you can use it to confirm whatever agreements work for you.  

We do not recommend that you try to make your own agreement without using our template.

What is a living together agreement?

A living together agreement (or cohabitation agreement, or no-nup agreement as it is sometimes called) is a record of what you have agreed about how you will own and share things with your partner. It encourages you to think about easy and fair ways to organise your day to day finances and means that if your relationship ended, neither of you would lose out financially - unless that is what you had agreed.

An agreement that sets out what would happen if you did split up isn’t an admission that you think you will, anymore than taking out building insurance means that you think your house will fall down. Making an agreement can strengthen your relationship by helping both partners to feel happier and more secure.

A living together agreement helps you to discuss and agree how you will pay for things like the rent or mortgage, and household bills. In doing so, it can help you to avoid the kind of arguments and minor worries that can build up over time or that might cause difficulties in the future. 

But when it really comes in useful, is if you were to split up. Obviously we all hope that we’re not going to split up, but unfortunately, some couples do split up. Unmarried couples have few rights or protections if it does all go wrong, no matter how committed to each other they were, or how long they have been together. (If you have children together, there are some things the law can help with, but not many). Instead, couples have to try and work out how to divide their property, money and belongings on their own - when they are usually heartbroken or angry and not feeling terribly fair.

Couples who haven’t made a living together agreement usually find that they have very different expectations of what should happen or ideas of what is fair. For couples who have been together a long time, it’s hard to even remember who contributed to what, let alone what you said about it at the time. 

As unromantic as it seems, making a living together agreement is actually a loving thing to do. It protects both yourself and your partner from unfairness and unpleasantness in the future, just in case. 

It is never the wrong time to make a living together agreement. 

Ideally you would make a living together agreement when you first move in together, but late is better than never, so even if you’ve already been together for 15 years it's still a good idea. Often people feel it is the right time when they have children together, or have decided that they don’t want to get married or don’t want to get married yet. 

Living together agreements have a slightly odd status in law. They aren’t binding unless you write them as a formal legal deed, but the court will usually follow them as long as what you agreed is fair, and you were both honest about your finances when you made the agreement. A court is even more likely to uphold the agreement if you both had some independent legal advice, separately, about what you were doing before signing the agreement.

If you want to ensure it is binding, you can make it in the form of a deed.  It is advisable to do this if you want to make sure that the agreement about the ownership of the home is binding, for instance, or if one of you is promising to pay something to the other. We advise you to each take independent legal advice if you are going to make the agreement in deed form. To save costs, download our template agreement and then each of you will need to ask a solicitor to check the draft that you have prepared using our template. Alternatively, print our ‘What to put in a living together agreement - a checklist’, make notes on it, and ask a solicitor to draft an agreement for you. 

You can find a good family solicitor by going to Resolution. Don’t be afraid to call around a few firms and compare prices before you decide which one to use.

Don't put it off

Hopefully you have decided you really should make a living together agreement - please don’t put it off. Like making a will, it doesn’t seem urgent and so too many people never get round to it until it is too late. We’re sure you can think of more fun things to do with your evening - but this is the most useful thing you can do.

We understand that some people feel awkward about bringing up this issue with their partner. So we asked readers who had made a living together agreement to tell us how they first suggested it to their partner.

"Tash has always been clear that she never ever wanted to get married. So when she got pregnant with our eldest, I went down on one knee and proposed a living together agreement." Aidan

"I just told him I hope our relationship lasts forever, but just in case it doesn’t we should make a living together agreement. If the worst does happen and we do split up, I don’t want us to hate each other." Neelam

“I’d heard about living together agreements mentioned it to my partner one night.  I said I didn’t think we needed to because, if we did split up, I thought we’d be really fair about money and the flat we rent.  She said that actually, she didn’t think she would be and as she is better at arguing than me, we should probably make an agreement now. The next day she had printed off the forms and we filled them in. Not the funnest evening in we’ve ever had but definitely pleased we have it in the drawer, just in case.” Suzi

"I earn more than my partner, always have. When I first mentioned living together agreements to her, it didn’t go well. I’m not sure if she got it confused with a celebrity pre-nup or what, but she definitely thought it was about me protecting what is mine. It was only when we were discussing what we would put in it that she realised that wasn’t it. "

Tom

The next part of this guide - What to put in your agreement - is a checklist that goes through all the issues that you might like to include in your living together agreement and other things that you must include. 

Don’t be put off by the size of this section - there may be many parts that won’t be relevant to your relationship. You can include any issues that are relevant to you and ignore the others. The only essential sections are marked with an ^*essential in the checklist. 

Print it off, and add notes about your details and the agreements you come to as you go through it with your partner. 

If you are planning to set up home together for the first time, one of the difficult things to work out is how much everything will cost. For this reason we have included a Budget helper, so that you can estimate what your joint household costs will be.

When you’ve finished the checklist you can either download our template agreement and transfer the answers to that, or take your notes to a solicitor and ask them to draft an agreement for you. 

Next to the space where you have been jotting down your details and agreements there is a box that explains where you put this information in the template agreement. 

If you use our template, when you have finished drafting the agreement read it through together out loud. This helps you to spot any mistakes.

Then invite a friend or two over and sign and date it in front of them. Then ask them to sign it as witnesses. 

Make sure that you both have a copy of the signed and dated document and that you keep it safe. 

You might need to update it...

Remember that when your circumstances change (perhaps because you have a baby, move, or get a much better/worse paid job) you need to update your agreement. 

We recommend that you use this checklist together with our downloadable template (Extended guide) or alternatively to discuss all the issues with your partner, note down your agreements, and take it to a solicitor to have drawn up into a living together agreement or Deed. We do not recommend that you try to make your own agreement without using our template.

For most people it will be easiest for you to print this page off and make notes on it as you discuss the issues with your partner.

Date ^*essential

It is important to have a date. This saves arguments later about when something was agreed.
The date is normally written at the beginning of the document, but you should only fill it in last - on the day that you both sign the final version of the document

Your names and addresses ^*essential

Any legal agreement needs to set out the names of the people who are making the agreement, and their address(es).

It also helps to have a short way of identifying yourself. For example, you could just use your first name, or the name that you are usually known by. So you could be:
James Peter Brown of 15 Market Road, Micklehampton, Loamshire FD22 3PQ (“Jim”).
At all later points in the document you will be referred to as Jim, until you get to your signature at the end.

Telling each other about your finances

You both need to be honest with each other about what you earn, what you own and what you owe. This is so that you both realise what you are agreeing to, and it removes the possibility of somebody later arguing that one of you was trying to take advantage of the other.

If you own your home (or any other property) you probably don’t need to get your property valued, but you need to agree on a realistic market value.

If you have any children it is important to include them in the agreement. You need to think about who is going to take responsibility for them and pay for them.

If there are children who have another parent (perhaps from a previous relationship), does that other parent support the children financially? Do you want to make an agreement about how the money from the other parent is used? Will the partner who is not the children’s parent assume any financial responsibility for the children? If so, what will it be?

Your home

If you are renting your home you do not need to say much about this in the agreement.

If you own it (whether or not you have paid off a mortgage) you need to decide about how you own it and spell out your agreements.

There are a number of different possibilities. The most obvious ones are:-

• One of you owns the home in his or her name only and does not want the other person to have a share of it. If this is your position, the non-owner needs to understand clearly that they will not get any share in the home, even if they make a financial contribution to the running of the household. Many people in this position decide it is fairest if the non-owner doesn’t contribute to the cost of buying the home, maintaining it, or decorating it, and just contributes to the general living expenses (food, utility bills, council tax, etc). Others do contribute but agree to see it as ‘rent’ that they would otherwise be paying. Whatever you agree is fair for you, you need to spell this out in the agreement.

• One of you owns the home but wants to agree that the other should have a share. If this is the case then you should consult a solicitor and decide how best to do this. This situation has not been covered in the living together agreement as it should not be done without getting individual legal advice. You can find a good family solicitor near you by going to Resolution.  

• You own the home between you - as joint tenants
  This means that you own all the home equally - not in shares that can be split up. If one of you dies the other will inherit the whole of the home. If you did not sort out the legal position in any detail when you bought the home, it is likely that this is the way you own it. You should check this with your solicitor to make sure. You can change the way you own it and turn it into a ‘tenancy in common’ (see below) if you prefer, but you should get legal advice about this.

• You own the home between you - as tenants in common. If you own the home this way you can state the shares you each have. If you don’t state the shares the law will treat you as owning it 50:50. Many people find it useful to own a home as tenants in common if they have made different contributions to the purchase price of the home, because the shares can reflect this. Your solicitor should have advised you about this when you bought the home and drawn up a Declaration of Trust that states the shares that you own. If this did not happen you can include it in the living together agreement but you should each take legal advice first and make sure that a solicitor approves the agreement. Your partner will not inherit your share automatically if you die first so it is vital that you both make wills. Making a will enables you to decide who will inherit your share. In many situations you will want this to be your partner you own the home with. If you don’t have a will, the intestacy rules will apply and your partner will not get your share. Instead it will go to a family member, in line with the intestacy rules.

Endowment policies

Household expenses and debts

If you are moving in together now you need to think about who is going to pay for what. This is sometimes difficult unless you know exactly how much you spend on everything. You may first need to use the Budget helper to help you to do this. This helps you both work out what you can afford.

You can sort out how you pay for the household expenses in various ways.

The simplest arrangement is probably to open a joint bank account for all the household expenses and each pay regular amounts into it (you can still keep separate accounts for any money that is not shared). You could each pay in the same amount (if you can both afford it), or you might decide to have a different arrangement. Some couples, for example, decide that they will each contribute half of their take-home pay each month.

If you have a joint bank account, the law treats you as owning half shares of any balance. This may be what you want, or you might feel that if one of you is putting in more than the other, you want to agree that any balance is shared in that ratio. You can set that out in your agreement.

You might decide that each of you will pay for particular items: one of you will pay the gas bill; the other will pay the food shopping. You need to explain in the agreement whether or not you treat these contributions as equal.

You could agree that whenever one of you pays a bill the other will give him or her half of the amount. This is a bit fiddly, but it may be the way that you start out.

If you have already been living together for sometime you have probably already organised your finances in some way. If you have, all you need to do is just note down how you generally pay for things and if you feel that you own them equally.

Debts
When you live together you do not become responsible for each other’s debts. You can only be legally responsible if you take out the loan, credit card or hire purchase agreement in your name (or jointly with your partner). If you owe anything before you get together your partner cannot become responsible for this.

However, if you are living together and the utilities (gas, electricity water, etc) and Council Tax are in one person’s name, the company can pursue anyone else that lives at the address and who uses the service, even if they aren’t named on the bill.

Savings

Some people have savings accounts or ISAs in one person’s name, that they treat as shared.

If you have any accounts other than your joint account, list them below and say whether they are shared or not.

Ownership of contents and other personal possessions

In order to avoid arguments about who owns what, it is helpful if you set out some rules in the agreement. The law is fairly straightforward but you may want to spell it out to avoid later misunderstandings.

If you owned something before you got together, it belongs to you.

If you bought something with your own money it belongs to you.

If you inherited something, or it was given to you by someone else, it belongs to you.

If one of you buys something and gives it to the other it belongs to the person to whom it is given.

If you buy something out of a joint bank account it belongs to you equally, unless you have agreed to own the account in different shares. If you have, you own the object in those shares.

If you buy something together but each contribute different amounts to the price, you own it in the shares in which you contributed.

Some people find it helpful to keep a list at the end of the agreement of any large or expensive items that they buy for the home, with a note of who owns them.

Cars

This section is for cars that you may not want to share if your relationship ends (even if you both use it during the relationship).  Even if the non-owner makes a contribution, they won’t gain a share in return.

Pensions

You both need to check out any pensions that you have.
The first thing to check is the ‘death-in-service’ benefit. Pension schemes through your employer will generally pay out a lump sum if you die before you retire. You can choose who you want to get this money. This is called ‘nominating’. You will generally be given a form to complete when you join a pension scheme so that you can do this. If you have done this a long time ago and can’t remember whom you nominated, contact the Human Resources department of your employer and check it. You can change a nomination if you want to. You should also check with the HR department whether the trustees of the pension scheme will agree to pay to your unmarried partner.

You can nominate the payment to go wholly to one person, or be divided between a few people. For instance, you could nominate your partner to get 50% and the rest to be divided equally between your children.

Ending the agreement

This agreement will end if your relationship ends. Or if you die or marry as the law will take over.

Transitional arrangements

This sounds rather grand but it just means what will happen while you are sorting out your split. There are a number of suggested clauses below that you might want to use. You probably don’t want to tie yourself down too tightly at this stage because you can’t predict what the future would hold. For example, you might want to say you’ll try to divide the furniture and things you bought together equally, or that you will aim to sell the home as soon as possible and divide the money equally or into other shares.

Renegotiations

Agreements like this can go out of date. If it seemed fair not to share everything equally when you were both working and making unequal contributions, it may need to change if one of you gave up work to look after a new baby, for example. You don’t have to change it, but it is a good idea to keep it under review. You might want to say that you will check it formally every three years, for instance.

Signing and dating the agreement ^*essential

Once you have got all the details into the agreement and are both happy that it is correct you need to sign it in front of a witness.

You should fill in your full names and sign to the right hand side of the page. Your witness should add their signature and then their full name and address.

You don’t have to both sign the document at the same time.

The same person can witness both your signatures.

Once you have both signed the document you should put the date on the front.

This checklist (and the template agreement available in the extended guide) are only to be used in the way described. The law is detailed and complicated. If in doubt, get expert advice.

We have created this to help you work out how much you spend on everything. It is probably easiest to print it off and fill it in by hand.

When you fill it in, please remember that there are 4.33 weeks in a month, not just 4.

Disclaimer

The information in this guide applies to England and Wales and is for general purposes only. The law may be different if you live in Scotland or Northern Ireland.

The law is complicated. We have simplified things in the guide to give you an idea of how the law applies to you. Please don't rely on this guide as a complete statement of the law or as a substitute for getting legal advice about what to do in the specific circumstances of your case.

The quotes and cases we refer to are not always real but show a typical situation. We hope they help you think about how to deal with your own situation.

Acknowledgments 

This guide was written and produced by Law for Life’s Advicenow project. Advicenow would like to thank all those who provided feedback on this guide.

Updated by Law for Life – December 2021 

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