The Legal Risks of Buying Property as an Unmarried Couple

More couples are buying property together before marriage than at any point in recorded history. The National Association of Realtors' data shows that unmarried couples accounted for 11% of all first-time homebuyers in 2025, up from just 4% in 1985, nearly a five-fold increase over four decades. The economic logic is straightforward. In a high-cost housing market, pooling resources is often the only viable path onto the property ladder, and waiting for a ring before buying can mean waiting years longer than the market will accommodate. What almost nobody explains clearly at the point of purchase is that the legal framework governing what happens to that property, whether the relationship ends, whether one partner dies or whether one partner simply wants to sell, simply does not exist for unmarried couples the way it does for married ones. At TheHouse48, this gap between the practical reality of how people are buying and the legal protection they actually have is one of the most important conversations we can have with buyers before they commit.

The Core Problem: Marriage Is the Default

The legal systems in most countries built their property frameworks around the assumption of marriage. Married couples have statutory protections governing how property is divided if the relationship ends, automatic inheritance rights if one spouse dies without a will and tax advantages on transfer that do not apply to unmarried partners. Unmarried couples have none of these protections by default. When an unmarried couple buys a property and the relationship ends, they are not in a divorce. They are in a civil dispute between two co-owners, and that dispute is governed by general property law and contract law rather than by any family law framework designed to produce fair outcomes. The practical difference is substantial. A married couple going through divorce has an established legal process with established principles of equity. An unmarried couple whose relationship breaks down is in commercial litigation over a shared asset, which is slower, more expensive and produces outcomes driven by what the legal documentation says rather than what each party contributed or intended.

The Title Structure That Changes Everything

When two people buy property together, the single most consequential legal decision they make is how they hold the title, and most buyers make this decision without fully understanding its implications. There are two primary structures available in most common law jurisdictions. Joint tenancy means both partners own an equal 100% share of the property, and if one partner dies, their share automatically transfers to the surviving partner, bypassing wills and probate entirely. This sounds like a protection but it also means that neither partner can independently sell, mortgage or bequeath their share without the other's consent, and that if the relationship ends, both parties have equal claims regardless of how unequal their financial contributions were. Tenancy in common allows partners to hold unequal shares that reflect their respective financial contributions, and if one partner dies, their share passes according to their will rather than automatically to the survivor. This structure is more flexible and typically more equitable for couples with uneven financial contributions, but it requires a will to protect the surviving partner and it creates the scenario where a deceased partner's share could legally pass to their family rather than their co-habiting partner.

According to CoBuy's Co-buying and Co-owning a Home 2025 report, 94% of unmarried co-buyers need a cohabitation agreement and most do not have one. Without it, they are relying on verbal agreements that have no legal standing.

What Happens When One Person Wants Out and the Other Does Not

The scenario that produces the most protracted and expensive disputes is the one where the relationship ends, one party wants to sell and the other refuses or cannot afford to buy out their partner's share. In this situation, neither party can force an immediate sale without going to court. The legal remedy is a partition action, where a court is asked to order the sale of the property and divide the proceeds. Partition actions are not quick. They involve court filings, valuations, hearings and legal costs that accumulate against the asset itself. Meanwhile, both parties remain legally bound to their joint mortgage obligations regardless of whether either of them still wishes to own the property. Missed mortgage payments during a protracted dispute damage both parties' credit profiles simultaneously, and the lender's rights to recover their loan are entirely unaffected by whatever the two co-owners are arguing about between themselves. Property laws are falling behind these shifting relationship dynamics, with co-owners often discovering only upon dispute that the legal system was not designed with their situation in mind.

What Happens When One Partner Dies

The death scenario is, in many ways, the most emotionally devastating version of this problem. An unmarried partner has no automatic inheritance rights in most jurisdictions, meaning that if title is held as tenants in common and the deceased partner has no will or a will that does not include the surviving partner, the deceased's share of the property passes to their legal next of kin. In practical terms, a surviving partner could find themselves co-owning a property with their late partner's parents, siblings or children, who may have no interest in allowing them to remain in the home and every legal right to demand a sale. Even where a will exists, the absence of the spousal exemptions available to married couples means that inheritance tax on the transferred share may become payable in jurisdictions with such taxes, creating a financial liability at the worst possible moment.

The Documents That Prevent All of This

The protection is not complicated to establish. It simply requires building the legal framework at the time of purchase rather than after the relationship has broken down. A cohabitation agreement, drafted by an independent solicitor and signed by both parties, can specify each partner's financial contribution to the purchase, how ongoing costs are shared, what happens if one party wants to sell, the process for valuing and buying out a departing partner's share and what happens to the property if one partner dies. Recording a memorandum of this agreement with the relevant title authority puts third parties on notice that the arrangement exists. A will for each partner that addresses the property specifically provides the inheritance protection that the law otherwise denies unmarried couples.

TheHouse48 works with buyers who understand that the paperwork behind a property purchase is not a formality. For unmarried couples making one of the most significant financial commitments of their lives together, it is the foundation on which everything else rests.