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Living together but not married?

People who live together don’t fit easily into the legal system. In some areas of law you are treated as if you are married and in others you are treated differently.

In England and Wales, living together doesn’t give you any legal rights, duties or responsibilities to each other. But you do still have financial responsibility for your child, even if you don’t have parental responsibility.

If you split up and you can agree your own arrangements, you don’t need to go to court to get an order about money or children. You can’t claim financial support for yourself from the other parent, but you can claim maintenance for your child. Also, if one of you dies, the other has no automatic right to inherit their property.

In Scotland you have some rights to claim for “economic advantage” or “disadvantage”, where one parent has benefited from the financial contributions made by the other while they were living together.

  1. Sorting out the home
  2. Who owns what?

Sorting out the home

Sorting out your rights in the family home can be difficult. Courts have limited powers about what each person owns and gets. This means you normally have to base your shares in the home on what you have agreed together and what contributions you have both made to the home. It’s often difficult to prove what you have each said or done in the past.

Read our housing rights and options section for more information on your housing situation.

Who owns what?

If you and the other parent lived together but were not married, the courts use general principles to decide who owns things.

  • If you paid for something, you own it, unless you gave it to the other person as a gift.
  • If you bought something together and split the cost equally, then you own it equally.
  • If you bought something out of joint funds and it’s not clear who contributed what to those funds, then you own it equally.
  • If you contributed more towards something you bought together, that’s how much of it you will own.
  • If you have both combined your money in a bank account which you have set up for dealing with joint household expenses, you own half each, unless you have made an agreement about having unequal shares.

There may be some cases when these rules don’t apply, so get legal advice before making a decision. It’s worth trying to reach an agreement between you because the cost of sorting out who owns what legally is often higher than the value of the goods. And remember, you can’t get legal aid to help you with this type of claim.