Cohabitation Agreement UK | TOLATA 1996 Deed Template

A cohabitation agreement is a contract, nothing more mystical than that, but its subject matter is your home, your savings, your pension arrangements and your possessions. It sets out how you and your partner own and manage property while you live together, and how those assets are divided if the relationship ends. In England and Wales the term is descriptive rather than statutory, which means no single Act creates it. Instead the courts enforce it under ordinary contract law, most reliably when it is executed as a deed.

People confuse it with two neighbouring documents. A declaration of trust records the precise beneficial shares in a specific property, usually the home, and nothing else. A cohabitation agreement is wider: it captures rent or mortgage contributions, council tax, joint accounts, cars, furniture, pets, and the exit mechanics if you split. Many couples sensibly run the two together, using our declaration of trust and tenancy assignment deed for England and Wales to fix the property shares and the cohabitation agreement to govern everything else. A prenuptial agreement, by contrast, only bites if you later marry, and even then a court can override it. A cohabitation agreement, correctly drafted, is treated as a binding contract rather than a persuasive suggestion.

No statute grants cohabiting partners the financial remedies that spouses enjoy. Married couples separate under the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973, with the court free to redistribute assets and order maintenance. Cohabitants have no equivalent. When they fall out over the home, the dispute is decided under the Trusts of Land and Appointment of Trustees Act 1996, universally shortened to TOLATA. Under sections 14 and 15 of that Act, the court can declare who owns what share and order a sale, but it cannot rewrite ownership to reflect fairness or need. If your name is not on the title and there is no written agreement, you must prove a beneficial interest through direct contributions or a common intention constructive trust, an expensive and uncertain exercise. This is precisely the litigation a cohabitation agreement is designed to prevent, and if you own or plan to buy together you should read it alongside our guidance on assured shorthold tenancy agreements for England and Wales where a rented home is involved.

The agreement itself takes effect under general contract law. To be enforceable it must be entered voluntarily, supported by full and frank financial disclosure, fair in its terms, and signed with a clear intention to create legal relations. The courts recommend that each partner take independent legal advice, and best practice is to execute the document as a deed. The reason matters: in Kirishani v Major [2026] EWHC 835 (Ch) the High Court confirmed that domestic financial understandings between cohabitants can attract a presumption against an intention to create legal relations, which is exactly the trap a signed deed avoids. For the statutory background to property disputes, the authoritative source is the full text of the Trusts of Land and Appointment of Trustees Act 1996 on legislation.gov.uk. One limit is absolute: an agreement cannot restrict a child's right to maintenance, which remains governed by the Child Maintenance Service and Schedule 1 of the Children Act 1989. Reform is on the horizon, with a government consultation on cohabitation rights expected to open in spring, but any legislation is years away, so the agreement remains the only dependable protection available now.

The clearest trigger is moving in together, especially into a home that only one of you owns. If you contribute to the mortgage, pay for a new kitchen, or cover the bills for years without your name on the title, you acquire no automatic stake. Recording the arrangement in writing before you pay a penny is the difference between a clean share and a doomed TOLATA claim. The second common scenario is buying a property jointly where your deposits are unequal. A couple splitting a home 70/30 by contribution but holding it as joint tenants will, on paper, own it 50/50, and only a written declaration corrects that. Our note on private loan agreements between individuals in the UK is worth reading where one partner is effectively lending the other a deposit.

Couples who have been together for years and never formalised anything are the third group, and often the most exposed, because memories of who paid for what have faded. A cohabitation agreement forces the conversation while both parties are still reasonable. It also earns its keep when one partner steps back from work to raise children or care for a relative, since that sacrifice carries no legal weight on separation unless the agreement says so. One edge case deserves flagging. If a child arrangements order or other court order already governs your family, you must read it before relying on any generic consent or financial clause, because the order takes priority and the agreement cannot override it. Blended families, second relationships with children from a first, and couples with a business between them all sit in this higher-risk band where bespoke drafting matters most.

• The property and beneficial ownership clause records whether you hold as joint tenants or tenants in common, and in what shares. It states who paid the deposit, how the equity divides on sale, and whether one partner has a first right to buy the other out. This is the clause most often litigated, so it is drafted to dovetail with a declaration of trust where one exists.
• The financial contributions clause sets out who pays the mortgage or rent, the council tax, utilities and food, and how any joint account is funded and split if closed. It also ringfences personal debts, so you are not left liable for a loan you never took, a point that quietly saves relationships as often as it saves money.
• The separation and exit clause is the working heart of the document. It fixes what happens to the home, the contents, the vehicles and the savings if you part, including timescales for sale, valuation method, and how disputes are resolved before anyone reaches court.
• The contents and possessions schedule lists significant items, cars, furniture, art, and who owns them, ending the familiar argument over who bought the sofa.
• The children and intentions clause can record your intended financial support for children, while making clear that it cannot displace the Child Maintenance Service or the court's powers under Schedule 1.
• The execution as a deed block carries the correct signing and witnessing wording, the formality that turns a friendly understanding into an enforceable contract.

This document is drafted for England and Wales, and that scope is deliberate rather than incidental. There is no such thing as a single body of UK cohabitation law, and applying an England and Wales agreement to a Scottish or Northern Irish relationship is a genuine risk rather than a technicality.

In Scotland, cohabitants already have limited statutory rights under the Family Law (Scotland) Act 2006, which allows a former partner to apply to the court for a financial payment on separation within a strict time limit. Scottish couples typically formalise arrangements through a minute of agreement, which can be registered in the Books of Council and Session for preservation and execution, giving it a force this template does not replicate. A cohabitation agreement written for England and Wales does not map onto that regime and should not be used north of the border.

In Northern Ireland, the position is closer to England and Wales, with no common law marriage and property disputes resolved through trust and property principles, but the procedural detail and court practice differ enough that separate advice is sensible. Within England and Wales itself, the practical variation is not regional but factual: couples in high-value housing markets such as London face larger equity stakes and more contested TOLATA claims, which raises the premium on precise drafting. If your circumstances straddle jurisdictions, for example a home in one country and a partner resident in another, the agreement should record which law governs it, and you may need parallel documents. When in doubt, treat the border as a hard line rather than a formality.

You start by identifying both partners and confirming the relationship is one of unmarried cohabitation, since the document is not designed for couples who are married or in a civil partnership. From there the form asks about your home: whether it is owned or rented, whose name is on the title or tenancy, and how each of you contributed to the purchase or the deposit. Those answers drive the ownership shares and the exit terms, so the more accurate your figures, the stronger the finished agreement.

Next you set out the running finances, the split of mortgage or rent, bills and joint accounts, and you list any significant possessions you want to allocate by name. You then choose how separation should work, whether the home is sold or one partner buys the other out, and how long that should take. The form prompts you to make the financial disclosure that enforceability depends on, and it builds in the deed execution wording so the document is signed and witnessed correctly. Once complete, you download it in Word and PDF, ready to sign. For couples who also want to record precise property shares separately, the child travel consent and parental authority letter for the UK sits usefully alongside where children are part of the picture.

The most damaging mistake is treating the agreement as optional paperwork to sort out later. Couples move in, merge their finances, and only reach for a document once the relationship is already fracturing, at which point neither party feels generous and the disclosure is rarely honest. Draft it early, while goodwill still exists. The second frequent error is skipping independent legal advice or full financial disclosure, both of which give a disgruntled ex the strongest ground to challenge the agreement later. An agreement signed after one partner hid an asset, or without either understanding the terms, is the kind a court is most willing to set aside.

Two more traps recur in practice. People try to make the agreement do things it legally cannot, most often restricting child maintenance, and the offending clause is simply unenforceable. And couples forget that life moves on. An agreement written when you rented a flat says nothing useful once you have bought a house together and had a child. Review and re-sign the document after any major change, a new property, a new baby, a inheritance, or it slowly loses its grip. Finally, failing to execute it as a deed, or signing without a witness, downgrades a binding contract into a document a court may treat as merely persuasive. The formalities are the point, not decoration. If you are also organising wider affairs, our overview of UK personal legal document templates covers the wills and powers of attorney that naturally accompany a cohabitation agreement.