Cohabitation Agreement Ireland (Cohabitants Act 2010, s.202)

Ireland has never recognised common law marriage. However long you live together, you do not acquire the rights of a spouse: no legal right share in your partner's estate, no entitlement on intestacy under the Succession Act 1965, and no automatic share in a house registered in your partner's sole name. The 2010 Act gave unmarried couples a safety net instead. A cohabitant who qualifies can ask the court for redress when the relationship ends, and a surviving partner can apply for provision out of the estate. A cohabitation agreement adds to that net: it tells the court what was actually agreed, and it can go further by excluding those statutory claims altogether.

The document is not a prenuptial agreement, which couples sign in contemplation of marriage and which has no binding status in Irish family law. Children stay outside the contract, because no agreement between the parents can oust the court's power over guardianship, custody, access and maintenance, where the child's best interests are paramount. In practice the best moment to sign is before you move in or buy together, when money can still be discussed calmly. Section 202(5) expressly allows that timing.

Part 15 of the 2010 Act defines a cohabitant as one of two adults who live together as a couple in an intimate and committed relationship and are not married to each other, civil partners of each other or closely related (section 172(1)). A qualified cohabitant is one who, immediately before the relationship ends, has lived with the other as a couple for 2 years where they are the parents of a dependent child, or for 5 years in any other case (section 172(5)). That person may apply under section 173 for a property adjustment, compensatory maintenance or pension adjustment order, which the court grants only where the applicant is financially dependent on the other because of the relationship or its ending. Proceedings must be issued within 2 years of the end of the relationship, save in exceptional circumstances (section 195). A claim against the estate of a deceased cohabitant follows its own deadline: 6 months after representation is first granted (section 194(1)), and as a rule none at all where the relationship ended 2 years or more before the death (section 194(2)).

Section 202 decides whether the agreement counts at all. A cohabitation agreement is valid only if each partner received independent legal advice before signing, or both received legal advice together and waived in writing the right to independent advice; it must also be in writing, signed by both, and comply with the general law of contract. A valid agreement may provide that neither partner will apply for redress under section 173 or for provision from the estate under section 194. The court keeps one override: it may vary or set aside the agreement in exceptional circumstances, where enforcing it would cause serious injustice (section 202(4)). The consolidated text is in the Law Reform Commission's revised version of the Cohabitants Act 2010. For joint tenants, section 30 of the Land and Conveyancing Law Reform Act 2009 adds a rule of its own: one owner cannot sever alone without the other's prior written consent.

The classic case is one partner moving into a house the other already owns. Without paperwork, years of paying towards the mortgage or the renovation can turn into a claim to a share of the property under a resulting trust, or through proprietary estoppel for work done on the house, on top of the redress scheme. A written agreement fixes the position and provides that a capital payment confirmed as repayable in a separate note signed by both is refunded within six months of separation. The mirror image is a joint purchase where one partner put down a larger deposit; recording tenants in common shares stops a 60/40 reality from collapsing into an assumed 50/50. Renters benefit too, mostly on who keeps the tenancy, a question that comes up alongside the other Irish property and tenancy documents a separation can require.

Older couples with children from earlier relationships often want to rule out a section 194 claim, so that each estate passes as their wills direct. A partner who holds shares in a family firm usually wants to ring-fence them, and the firm's own company and commercial agreements should say the same thing. A partner about to give up work to raise a child faces the opposite risk, so the cohabitation agreement may instead keep the statutory claims open and record a separation payment. If either partner is still married to someone else, the agreement cannot affect that spouse's rights.

After the parties, recitals and definitions, the validity article mirrors section 202(2) and adapts to your answer: either each of you sees your own solicitor and Schedule 3 carries two certificates of independent legal advice, or you see one solicitor together and Schedule 3 carries a joint certificate plus the written waiver the Act requires. Schedules 1 and 2 hold each partner's financial disclosure, because an agreement signed on incomplete figures is the easiest one to attack.

The home article handles seven situations: owned by the first or the second partner alone, owned jointly as joint tenants or as tenants in common in stated shares, or rented in both names or in one. Where one partner owns the house, the other acquires no interest by paying towards running costs, and the mortgage, structural insurance and Local Property Tax stay with the owner unless you agree otherwise. Joint tenants sever by mutual agreement at the Separation Date, so survivorship stops after a break-up. Household expenses are split equally, in proportion to net income after tax, USC and PRSI, or as you describe, with or without a joint account; debts in each partner's own name and pensions stay personal, while joint debts follow the expenses split. Wills and powers of attorney sit alongside this agreement in our Irish personal legal documents.

On the way out, you can exclude both statutory claims, exclude redress only, or keep both and ask the court to give weight to what you signed. A buy-out procedure with a valuer from the Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland deals with a jointly owned home, followed by an open-market sale if nobody buys. You also choose a period of one, three or six months, which sets the moving-out deadline or, for joint owners, the window for a buy-out notice, and an optional separation payment, while later articles cover death and tax, children, review triggers and family mediation, for example through the Legal Aid Board.

You start with each partner's full name, address with Eircode and occupation. The next screen asks whether you already live together and the date cohabitation began or will begin, which matters for the 2 and 5 year thresholds. You then choose how legal advice will be given, describe who owns or rents the home and set out how household costs are shared. One question settles the statutory claims, another the moving-out period and any separation payment, and the last collects each partner's assets, debts and income for the schedules. Every answer appears in the preview on the right, and the Next and Back buttons let you move between steps before you click Finish.

Download the result in Word or PDF and take it to your solicitor or solicitors. Do not sign before the advice has been given: the certificate in Schedule 3 must describe advice that has already happened. Each of you then signs in front of an adult witness who is not the other partner, and you keep one original each. Other paperwork can be prepared from the full range of Irish legal templates, organised by area of law.

The most expensive mistake is signing without any legal advice. People assume a waiver box solves the problem, but section 202(2) only allows a waiver of independent advice after you have received advice together; a cohabitation agreement signed with no advice at all is not a valid cohabitants' agreement, and the exclusion of redress falls with it. The second error is thin disclosure. Leaving out a pension, a site inherited from a parent or a large credit card balance hands the other partner a ready argument that the contract rests on a false basis.

Circumstances also move. An agreement signed by two childless professionals reads very differently after a baby arrives and one partner goes part-time, because the qualifying period drops to 2 years and the dependence question changes. Review the agreement after every major life event, and at least every five years. Joint tenants regularly overlook survivorship: a partner who dies the week after a separation, before anyone has severed, passes the whole house to the other unless the agreement already deals with it. The last trap is the replacement home: if the next house is bought or rented on a different basis, the agreement must be varied before completion, with fresh legal advice.