Free cohabitation agreement template

Living together does not make you married

The belief that a couple becomes common law married after living together for some number of years is one of the most persistent misunderstandings in family law, and the part people rely on is the part that is wrong. Most states do not recognise common law marriage at all. A minority still do, several of those abolished it at some point while keeping valid the marriages formed before the cutoff, and the ones that do recognise it generally require more than time: an actual present agreement to be married, holding yourselves out publicly as spouses, and cohabitation. What no state does is treat time alone as enough. Seven years of living together, on its own, creates a marriage nowhere. The stakes are worth being blunt about. Absent an agreement or a claim you can prove, an unmarried partner has no automatic right to a share of property held in the other's name. Nor to support on separation. If your partner dies without a will you do not inherit, and you may find you have no standing to make medical decisions or even to be treated as next of kin. Check what your own state does with common law marriage before you assume anything, because the rule differs and it has been changing. Clause 1 of this template states expressly that the partners are not intending to create a marriage, which is useful in either direction: it prevents an argument that one exists, and it makes clear the agreement is doing the work instead.

How to fill it in

Complete Schedules A, B and C before you touch the body of the agreement. The schedules are where most of the value sits, and clause 2 depends on them being honest.

• Schedules A and B, disclosure: each partner lists their assets, debts and income. Undisclosed assets are the most common reason an agreement like this gets set aside, so err towards listing too much.
• Schedule C, joint property: what you own together and in what shares. Clause 4 asks you to revisit it yearly, which sounds fussy until you have bought a car and a sofa and cannot remember whose money paid for what.
• Clause 5, the home: pick (a) owned by one, (b) owned jointly, or (c) rented, and strike the other two. This is the clause that decides most disputes, so read all three before choosing.
• Clause 6, expenses: equal, proportionate to income, or something you describe. Proportionate is worth considering where incomes are very different, because an equal split of a mortgage on a house only one of you owns is a bad deal that looks fair.
• Clause 9, support: waive it or agree it. A waiver is the usual choice and is exactly the kind of term Marvin contemplated.
• Clause 13, marriage: decide now whether the agreement ends if you marry. Most couples should pick (a) and sign a premarital agreement if they want these terms to survive.
• Both partners initial the acknowledgment block at the back. It is short, and it is the page a court looks at first if the agreement is ever challenged.

The clause that decides most disputes

Nearly every serious argument between separating unmarried partners is about a home that one of them owns and both of them paid for. One partner holds the title. The other paid half the mortgage for six years, put savings into a new kitchen, and assumed that meant something. Legally, often it did not. Clause 5 makes you confront that at the start, when you can still be reasonable about it. Option (a) says plainly that the non-owning partner acquires nothing by living there, paying rent or improving the property, and then gives you a bracketed space to say what they do get, if anything. Use it. A clause that says one partner gets nothing after ten years of mortgage payments will generally be upheld in states that follow the majority approach, and it is also the sort of term that produces litigation regardless of whether it holds. Recording something concrete is both fairer and easier to prove: a credit for contributions to mortgage principal, a fixed percentage of the increase in value, or a lump sum payable on separation. If you own together, option (b) makes you record whether you are tenants in common in stated shares or joint tenants with right of survivorship. That distinction decides what happens if one of you dies, and people choose it by accident at the closing table more often than they choose it deliberately. Keep receipts for unequal contributions to a deposit, because the shares in Schedule C are much easier to defend when the arithmetic behind them still exists.

What this agreement cannot do

A cohabitation agreement is a property contract between two adults. There are limits on what a contract between two adults can settle, and being clear about them protects you from relying on a term that will not hold.

• Children are outside it entirely. Custody, parenting time and child support are decided in the child's best interests under state law, and a court is not bound by what the parents agreed. Any term restricting a child's right to support is void, which clause 12 states.
• It cannot rest on sexual services as consideration. That is the express limit in Marvin, and it is why the agreement is framed around property, expenses and contributions.
• It cannot create inheritance rights. Clause 11 is explicit: unmarried partners do not inherit automatically anywhere in the United States. If you want your partner to receive anything, you need a will, and you need to check the beneficiary designations on retirement accounts and life insurance, because those pass outside a will and an out-of-date designation overrides it.
• Medical decisions need their own document. Authority over a partner's care comes from a medical power of attorney or an advance directive, signed separately from this one.
• Third parties are not bound by it. Your lender and your landlord never agreed to any of this, so allocating a joint loan to one partner between yourselves leaves you both on the hook to the bank. Clause 5 says it out loud because people are repeatedly caught by it.
• It cannot survive a total failure to disclose. An agreement signed by someone who did not know what the other person owned is the classic candidate for being set aside.
• It cannot make a transfer between you tax-free. Spouses can move assets between themselves without limit; unmarried partners cannot. A large payment, a credit for mortgage contributions, or an unequal share in a property bought together can be treated as a gift, and gifts above the annual exclusion have to be reported on a federal gift tax return even where no tax ends up being due. Ask an accountant before moving a significant sum or putting a partner on a title.

Where you sign it matters more than usual

Most contracts work roughly the same way across the United States. Agreements between unmarried partners are an exception, because they sit on top of state family law and public policy, and the states have not landed in the same place. The majority position follows the reasoning in Marvin: an express written contract between unmarried partners is enforceable on ordinary contract principles, provided it is not founded on sexual services as consideration. Some states go further and recognise claims even without a written agreement, through implied contract, unjust enrichment or a constructive trust, which is a way of preventing one partner from keeping the whole benefit of a joint effort. Others have taken a narrower view. Illinois is the clearest example of a state to check before relying on anything: its Supreme Court has returned to the question of whether property rights can accrue between unmarried cohabitants more than once, in Hewitt v. Hewitt (1979) and again in Blumenthal v. Brewer (2016 IL 118781), which is itself the signal. A question a state's highest court keeps revisiting is not one to assume you know the answer to. We are not going to summarise fifty states here, and you should be sceptical of any free page that claims to. The practical advice is short. Name your state in clause 18, and if you are in a state you have any doubt about, or you own a home together, spend an hour with a family lawyer there before signing. Clause 18 also warns that a court in a different state may apply its own law, which matters if you move.

Making it stand up if it is ever challenged

An agreement is only worth something if it survives the day someone wants out of it. Challenges to agreements like this almost always run on the same handful of arguments, and each one has a cheap answer at signing time. Note that some states look at whether the terms were fair when the agreement was signed, and some will also look at whether they are still fair when someone tries to enforce it, which is a large part of why clause 15 asks you to keep the document current.

• Full disclosure. Complete Schedules A and B properly. "I did not know he had that" is the most effective attack there is, and the schedules exist to remove it.
• Independent legal advice. Each partner should use their own lawyer, or knowingly decline. The acknowledgment block records which, and one lawyer cannot advise both of you.
• No pressure and no deadline. Do not present this to someone the week they are giving up their apartment, and never on the day of a move. Time to read it and to take advice is the point.
• Terms that are not grossly one-sided. A contract that leaves one partner with nothing after many years is the kind a court looks for a reason to unpick. A term that leaves something on the table survives better than one that takes everything.
• Get it in writing and keep it current. Clause 15 asks for a review every three years and on any big change. An agreement describing a life you stopped living in 2019 is easy to argue about.
• Put it in writing at all. Where real property is involved, an oral arrangement runs into the statute of frauds, and proving an unwritten promise about a house is close to impossible.
• Consider notarising it. This template includes an optional notary block. Most states do not require it for this document, but it makes the signatures difficult to dispute and a notary costs very little.

Cohabitation agreement or prenuptial agreement

They answer the same question for different relationships, and one does not turn into the other. A cohabitation agreement governs a couple who live together and are not married. It takes effect while you are living together and it is enforced as an ordinary contract. A prenuptial agreement governs a couple who are about to marry, takes effect on the marriage, and in most states is governed by a specific statute setting out its own requirements for disclosure, voluntariness and sometimes formality, with notarisation required in some places. What catches people out is the transition. Signing a cohabitation agreement does not give you a prenup if you later marry, and a court may well treat the cohabitation agreement as spent once you are married. Clause 13 makes you decide which you want, and if you pick option (b), it also tells you plainly that a court may not give effect to it and that you should sign a premarital agreement instead. If marriage is on the horizon, treat this document as covering the period until then, and get a prenup drafted before the wedding rather than after.

If you are the partner with less

Most writing about cohabitation agreements is aimed at the partner protecting assets. If you are the one moving into someone else's home, or earning less, or giving something up to be there, the agreement is still worth having, and these are the terms to look at closely.

• Do not sign away contributions you are actually going to make. If you will be paying towards a mortgage on a home you do not own, clause 5(a) has a bracketed space for what you get in return. Filling it in is the single most valuable thing you can do.
• Ask for the other schedule. You are entitled to see what your partner owns before you agree how property is treated, and a refusal tells you something.
• Get your own lawyer, and do not use theirs. Clause 14 says the same. If cost is the obstacle, an hour of advice is cheaper than the alternative.
• Watch for a support waiver you cannot afford. Clause 9(a) is the standard choice, but if you are leaving work to raise children or to care for a relative, option (b) exists for a reason.
• Think about the home if your partner dies. A cohabitation agreement gives you no right to stay. If the home is theirs and it passes to their children, you can be asked to leave. A will, or a right of occupancy written into one, is what fixes that.
• Take the review clause seriously. An agreement signed when you were both renting should not still be governing after you have raised a family in a house.
• If you are being pressured to sign quickly, that is itself the reason not to.

When to get a lawyer involved

This template covers a straightforward arrangement between two partners with ordinary finances. Several situations warrant real advice, and the money at stake usually justifies it.

• You own, or are buying, real property together or one of you owns the home the other will contribute to.
• You live in a state that treats these agreements restrictively, or you are unsure which those are.
• There is a significant imbalance in assets or income, or one partner is giving up a career.
• Children from an earlier relationship, or an inheritance you want protected for them.
• A significant sum or a property interest is moving between you, where the gift tax reporting rules apply in a way they never would between spouses.
• A business interest, a professional practice, a pension or equity compensation is involved.
• You are planning to marry, in which case a premarital agreement is the right document.
• You want the agreement to work across more than one state or country.

A note on what this page is

This is a general-purpose template and general information, not legal advice. Agreements between unmarried partners are governed by state law and the states differ more here than in almost any other area of contract, with some enforcing them readily and others much less so. Anything touching children is outside what a private agreement can settle. Read this against your own situation, and take advice in your own state before signing, particularly if a home is involved.