Unmarried couples' legal rights in the UK: the home, money, children and death

Is common-law marriage a myth?

This guide explains unmarried couples’ rights in the UK, with the detail for England and Wales. Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own rules, covered below.

Common-law marriage is a myth. In England and Wales there’s no such thing, however long you live together, and whether or not you have children. You don’t get the rights of a married couple or civil partners. Citizens Advice puts it simply: calling someone a “common-law partner” is just another way of saying you live together. It gives you no extra rights.

Plenty of people believe otherwise. When we surveyed 39 people living with a partner and planning to buy a home, fewer than half (18 of 39) knew that living together for a few years doesn’t give you married couples’ rights if you split up.

What that means in practice: the law treats you as two separate people who happen to share a home. Who owns the house, who gets the savings and who inherits is decided by ordinary property law, whose name is on things, and what you wrote down. The courts can’t share out your property the way they can on a divorce.

What about Scotland and Northern Ireland?

The rest of the UK has its own rules:

• Scotland abolished marriage by “cohabitation with habit and repute” for couples who started living together from 4 May 2006, so there’s no common-law marriage there either. But the Family Law (Scotland) Act 2006 gives cohabitants some claims. When you split up, either of you can ask a court for a payment that reflects any economic advantage or disadvantage from the relationship, and you have to apply within one year of stopping living together. If a partner dies without a will, the survivor can ask a court for provision from the estate, within a short time limit.
• Northern Ireland has its own family law and courts, and the 2026 proposals for England and Wales don’t cover it. If you live there, check nidirect or speak to a solicitor in Northern Ireland.

What legal rights do unmarried couples living together have?

In England and Wales, some things work the same whether you’re married or not, and some are very different. Here’s how the main ones compare.

Topic	Married or civil partners	Living together
The home if you split	A court can decide what happens to it in the divorce	Shared by who owns it and in what shares
Right to stay in the home	A spouse who doesn’t own it still has “home rights” to live there	No automatic right if it’s not in your name
Money for you after a split	A court can order maintenance	No legal duty to support each other
If one dies with no will	The spouse inherits all or some	Nothing under the intestacy rules
Tax when one dies	Inheritance Tax spouse exemption applies	No spouse exemption
Supporting your children	Both parents must support them	Both parents must support them

Money and debts. You’re each responsible for debts in your own name, but not for debts only in your partner’s name. For debts in joint names, including a joint mortgage or joint loan, you may be responsible for the whole amount, not just half. Council tax is different: if you live together as a couple, you’re usually both liable for the whole bill, even if only one of you is named on it. Either of you can usually take money out of a joint bank account, whoever paid it in.

Pensions. Some pension schemes don’t pay survivor’s benefits to an unmarried partner at all. Where a scheme does, you usually need to name your partner on an “expression of wishes” or nomination form. Advicenow also points out that, unlike married couples, you won’t be entitled to part of your partner’s State Pension.

Tax. You’re taxed as two individuals. You can’t use the Marriage Allowance, and you don’t get the rules that let married couples give each other assets free of Capital Gains Tax. The big one is Inheritance Tax: anything left to a spouse or civil partner is normally tax free, but there’s no exemption for an unmarried partner.

Benefits. For means-tested benefits, such as Universal Credit, you’re treated as a couple if you live together: you claim Universal Credit jointly, and your income is assessed together. So for benefits you’re treated as a couple, even though for property you’re treated as two individuals.

What are cohabiting couples’ rights to the home if you split up?

This is where the difference from marriage shows most. What happens depends on whose name the home is in, and what you recorded.

If you own it together and recorded your shares. If you bought as tenants in common with a declaration of trust, your recorded shares usually decide who gets what. This is the clearest position for both of you.

If you own it together and recorded nothing. The starting point is that you own it in equal shares, even if one of you paid more. The Supreme Court confirmed this in Jones v Kernott in 2011. It can change only if there’s evidence you both intended something different, and proving that means looking back over your whole relationship with the home, which is slow, costly and hard to predict.

If it’s in one partner’s name. The owner is usually the only one with any right to the home or its value. The other partner may be able to show they gained a share, for example from what you agreed when they moved in and what they paid towards it. But Advicenow says this is usually very tricky to prove, and if you can’t agree it you have to go to court. Our guide to when your partner owns the house and you’re not on the deeds covers this in detail.

If you rent. If you’re both named on the tenancy, you’re joint tenants with the same rights, and you both stay responsible for the rent while you’re both named. If only one of you is named, the other has no automatic right to stay.

If you can’t agree about a home you own, either of you can ask a court to decide, for example to order a sale. Citizens Advice says the court will usually divide the value according to the shares you own. Unlike on a divorce, the court can’t order maintenance, split pensions or order lump sums: its powers are largely limited to deciding who owns what and ordering a sale. If you have children together, a court can also make orders for them, covered below.

A court can also make a short-term “occupation order” deciding who stays in the home. It weighs things such as each of your housing needs and money, the effect on your health, safety and wellbeing and that of any children, how you’ve behaved towards each other, and how long you lived together. For a partner who isn’t an owner, it lasts up to six months and can be extended once, for up to six months more. It’s a stopgap, not a share of the home.

What happens if one of you dies?

Without a will, an unmarried partner inherits nothing under the intestacy rules. Everything in the other partner’s sole name goes to their relatives in a fixed order set by law, starting with any children, and to the Crown if there are no relatives who can inherit. However long you were together, this doesn’t change.

What passes to you depends on how things were owned:

• Joint tenants. If you own the home as joint tenants, the survivor gets the whole home automatically, whatever any will says. A joint bank account works the same way.
• Tenants in common. Each share passes under that person’s will. Without a will, your partner’s share goes to their relatives, not to you.
• Sole name. The whole home goes under the will, or to relatives if there isn’t one.

If you’re left out, there’s a safety net, but it’s a court claim. Under the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975, a partner who lived with the person who died, as a couple, for the whole of the two years before the death can ask a court for reasonable financial provision from the estate. For an unmarried partner, that means what’s reasonable for their maintenance, not a spouse’s share. Someone who was being financially supported by the person who died can also apply, without the two-year rule. You normally have to apply within six months of the grant of probate or letters of administration.

Two other things to check:

• Inheritance Tax. There’s normally no Inheritance Tax if an estate is below the £325,000 threshold, or if everything above it goes to a spouse or civil partner. An unmarried partner doesn’t count, so a larger estate left to you could owe tax that a spouse wouldn’t.
• Bereavement Support Payment. An unmarried partner can claim it only if, when their partner died, they were getting Child Benefit, or had been told they were entitled to it, for a child living with them, or they were pregnant.

So the fix is simple and fair to both of you: make wills, name each other on your pensions, and choose how you own your home with your eyes open. A lasting power of attorney is also worth thinking about. It lets you choose who can make decisions for you, such as your partner, if you can’t make them yourself.

What rights do unmarried parents and children have?

Children are the one area where marriage matters much less.

Parental responsibility is the legal right and duty to make decisions about a child’s upbringing. The birth mother always has it. A father who isn’t married to or in a civil partnership with her gets it by jointly registering the birth with her (for births registered in England and Wales from 1 December 2003). If you don’t register the birth together, he can apply for it. There are different rules for same-sex couples and children born through fertility treatment.

Financial support for children. Both parents are responsible for supporting their children, married or not. The Child Maintenance Service can be involved if you can’t agree.

The home, for the children’s sake. Under Schedule 1 to the Children Act 1989, a parent can ask a court for orders against the other parent for a child’s benefit. These include regular payments, lump sums, and transferring or settling property for the child. Citizens Advice says a court might delay selling the home until the youngest child is 18. These orders are for the children’s needs. Unlike on a divorce, the parent can’t ask for provision for themselves.

How does this work with real numbers?

Alex and Jordan aren’t married. They buy a £300,000 home in both names. Alex puts in a £40,000 deposit and Jordan £10,000, with a £250,000 joint mortgage. A few years later the home is worth £330,000 with £230,000 of the mortgage left, so there’s £100,000 of equity.

If they split up and sell, here’s what each would get, depending on what they recorded:

Alex and Jordan's £100,000 if they split up

What they recorded	Alex gets	Jordan gets
Joint names, no shares recorded	£50,000	£50,000
Deposits back first	£65,000	£35,000
Nothing written down, Alex's name only	£100,000	£0 unless a court finds a share

In the first row the law starts from equal shares, whatever each paid in. In the middle row they bought as tenants in common and recorded their split: each gets their deposit back first (£40,000 and £10,000), then the £50,000 left over is split equally (£25,000 each). The last row shows what would happen if they had bought in Alex’s name alone with nothing written down: Jordan starts with nothing unless a court finds a share, and would have to prove it, even though Jordan paid £10,000 of the deposit. Illustration only: this ignores selling costs, tax and who paid what towards the mortgage. Try your own numbers in the deposit split calculator.

Now say Alex dies without a will, before they sell:

How they own the home	What happens to Alex’s share
Joint tenants	Passes to Jordan automatically
Tenants in common, no will	Goes to Alex’s relatives, not Jordan
Tenants in common, will leaving it to Jordan	Goes to Jordan
Alex’s name only, no will	The whole home goes to Alex’s relatives

In the second and fourth rows, Jordan could still ask a court for provision from Alex’s estate if they had lived together for at least two years. But that is a court claim, not an automatic right, so it takes time and money.

The fair version for both of them is the highlighted row plus wills: shares recorded when they buy, and a will from each saying who gets their share.

Is the law changing for unmarried couples?

Not yet. The Ministry of Justice consulted on “A fairer end to relationships” from 5 June to 14 August 2026. It covers England and Wales. When we checked on 1 October 2026, the government said it was analysing the responses, and no outcome had been published.

The main proposals for cohabiting couples were:

• Who it would cover: couples who have lived together for at least three years, or who live together and have a child together.
• Opting out: it would apply automatically, but couples could opt out if both agree.
• The starting point: each person keeps what they legally own. A court would depart from that only to meet defined needs, assessed more narrowly than on divorce. There would be no default 50/50 split.
• Time limit: a claim would have to be made within two years of separating.
• Death: qualifying partners would inherit automatically if their partner dies without a will, subject to a clear definition and a minimum length of relationship.

These are proposals, and any new law would come “when parliamentary time allows”. Even if they go ahead, the starting point would be what each of you legally owns, so recording your shares and making wills would still matter.

What should you do next?

1. Talk it through together. Agree how you’ll share the home, the deposit, the mortgage and the bills, and what happens if you split up. The free 10-minute conversation takes you through it side by side, and your answers stay on your device.
2. Record how you own your home. If you’re buying, tell your conveyancer whether you’ll be joint tenants or tenants in common, and in what shares. Our guide to joint tenants or tenants in common explains the choice.
3. Write it down. A couples agreement (also called a cohabitation agreement or a house buying agreement) records what you’ve agreed. Courts can take it into account, especially if it’s fair and you were both open about your money. See what a couples agreement covers and how your agreement counts.
4. Make wills, and name each other on your pension nomination forms.
5. Register the birth together if you have a child, so both parents have parental responsibility.
6. Get legal advice if one of you owns the home alone, family money is involved, either of you has children from a previous relationship, or you’re separating now. A solicitor or family mediator can help before you agree anything.
7. Review it when something big changes, such as a baby, a move or a change in pay.