Living Together Agreements
What's a Living Together agreement?
Moving in with your partner may be one of the most exciting and romantic decisions you'll make in your life. So, as you step over the threshold and start your new life together, you're not likely to be considering your legal rights, or anything as mundane as how you're going to pay the bills. You're certainly unlikely to be thinking about what would happen to your home, sofa, bills etc if you split up.
A Living Together agreement needn't be used like a celebrity pre-nup, where you don't want your partner to waltz off after 15 minutes of marriage with your favourite Beverly Hills mansion and a recording contract. They aren't about "this is mine, that is yours and you're not getting a penny out of me"; otherwise only couples about to split up would ever make them. Instead you can use a living together agreement to sort out the day to day workings of living together and protect both you and your partner from whatever might happen to your relationship in the future.
Ideally you would make a Living Together agreement when you first move in together, but your mother was right and late is better than never, so even if you've already been together for 15 years it's still a good idea.
A Living Together agreement isn't just about breaking up, it's about how you will live together. Making the agreement prompts you to discuss how your living together will work in practice and what your expectations of each other are. In fact many of the couples we've spoken to say that they found that just making the agreement strengthened their relationship.
Making the agreement also helps you to organise the day to day finances of living together. It prompts you to think about easy and fair ways to divide the costs, and avoids those niggling little arguments about who's paying for the food, and who's paying the gas bill, that can sometimes mount up.
Can Living Together agreements be enforced in law?
Just like a pre-nup, Living Together agreements have a slightly odd status in law. The courts will not let you sign away rights that the law gives you but a court will generally follow what you both agreed if:
- it still produces a fair result for both of you
- you both were honest with each other about your finances at the start.
A court is even more likely to uphold the agreement if both of you also had some legal advice about what you were doing.
A second option would be to have it written by a solicitor as a formal legal 'deed'. If you did this it would be legally binding in the same way as any legal contract between two parties is.
An agreement that does set out what would happen if you split up isn't an admission that you might. In fact it can strengthen your relationship by helping both partners to feel happier and more secure. Many people find the fact that they don't know what would happen if the relationship ended an extra stress, even while the relationship is otherwise perfectly healthy.
A Living Together agreement is also useful because, if you were to split up, it can help you to do it as amicably and fairly as possible. Suggesting to your partner that you make an agreement isn't a declaration of the fact that you're about to dump them, or a suggestion that your partner may try to rob you blind (or you them). Even with the best intentions on all sides, if you do split up many, many years down the line it might be impossible to remember who contributed what when you started your life together. You may each remember what was said and done very differently and this may make things even more difficult if you do break up, making it harder for you to remain on good terms. It can also mean that, without either of you meaning to, you may come to an unfair arrangement between you. If you have the agreement you can at least be sure what it was you contributed and agreed to.
The other thing to bear in mind is how you would be feeling if your relationship did end for any reason - neither of you are likely to be looking forward to lengthy rounds of negotiation! Instead you may feel like giving up and walking away leaving everything you owned, which certainly wouldn't be fair either. If you have written your agreements already it can make it a lot less painful, quicker, and fairer for both of you should you split up.
Making a Living Together agreement also greatly reduces the chances of your relationship ending in the worst possible way - in a long and bitter (not to mention expensive) court battle.
Convinced? Download our 
Living Together Agreements (292 KB) leaflet for more information and an agreement that you and your partner can just fill in.
