News · Living together and the law

Do unmarried couples have rights when they split up? The reform that closed for consultation this week

By Jess Knauf, Director of Client Strategy at Mediate UK · 15 August 2026

At 11.59pm on Thursday 14 August, the government’s consultation on A fairer end to relationships closed to responses. It had been open since 5 June. The second half of it proposes something England and Wales has never had: a set of financial rights and protections for couples who live together, when that relationship ends.

If you are living with a partner and you own nothing in your own name, this is the proposal that matters most to you. It is also the one most likely to be misreported, so here is what is actually on the table, and what the law still says today.

Key point

Nothing has changed. This is a consultation that has just closed, not a new law. There is still no such thing as common law marriage in England and Wales, and living together for twenty years still gives you no automatic claim on your partner’s property.

What the law gives unmarried couples right now

Far less than most people assume. When a married couple separates, the court can redistribute almost everything: the house, savings, pensions, future income. When an unmarried couple separates, the starting point is simply who owns what on paper.

If your name is not on the title deeds, you are not automatically entitled to a share of the home. You can bring a claim under the Trusts of Land and Appointment of Trustees Act 1996, usually called TOLATA, but you have to prove there was a shared intention that you would own part of it and that you acted on that intention. Those claims are difficult, slow and expensive, which is why so many people walk away rather than run one. Our guide to the family home and your options after separation sets out how that plays out in practice.

Where there are children, the position is better. Schedule 1 of the Children Act 1989 lets a parent apply for financial provision for a child, including help with housing and lump sums, whether or not the parents were ever married. That money is for the child, though, not for the parent, and housing provided this way usually reverts to the paying parent once the child grows up. Separately, child maintenance is owed by both parents regardless of marital status.

What you cannot ask for at all, as things stand, is spousal maintenance or a share of your partner’s pension. That last one bites hardest on the person who reduced their hours or stopped work to raise children, because the pension they did not build up is often the second largest asset in the relationship. Our guide to pensions on divorce explains why that gap is so costly.

What the government has proposed

Part 2 of the consultation sets out a statutory framework for what it calls eligible cohabitants. Two routes in are proposed. You would qualify if you had lived together for three years or more, or if you lived together and shared a child. The consultation describes the group it has in mind as adults in long term, committed and interdependent relationships.

If you qualified, a court could make a property adjustment order, transferring or carving out an interest in property, and could order a lump sum. Maintenance would be available only in exceptional and time bound circumstances, the example given being long term health problems. Pension sharing orders would not be available at all. A claim would have to be brought within two years of separation.

The framework is deliberately narrower than divorce. The equal sharing principle would not apply, so the starting point would remain what each person legally owns rather than a presumption of splitting the pot. Discretionary needs, the more generous end of what a spouse can argue for, would be excluded. The government has also said a cohabitant should not be able to do better than a spouse would in a comparable situation. The compensation model recommended by the Law Commission back in 2007 has been rejected in favour of this narrower, needs based approach.

Key point

Qualifying would not mean an equal split. It would mean you could ask a court for a share of property or a lump sum to meet a defined need. You would still start from what you legally own, and pensions would stay out of reach.

Why this is being proposed now

The consultation puts the case in numbers. More than 3.5 million couples in England and Wales live together without marrying or entering a civil partnership, a figure that has more than doubled over the past three decades. In 2022, 51 per cent of babies were born to unmarried parents. By 2031, one in four families is projected to be a cohabiting one.

The government also states plainly who carries the risk when these relationships end. It names women, children, and victims and survivors of domestic abuse, including economic abuse, as the groups the current gap affects most.

Key point

Read the 51 per cent figure carefully. It means most babies born in 2022 had parents who were not married to each other. It does not mean most were born to a lone parent. A large share were registered by two parents living at the same address, and those are exactly the families this reform is aimed at.

You would be able to opt out

The protections would apply automatically to couples who met the criteria, with the option for both partners to agree to opt out. To be effective, an opt out agreement would need to be a valid contract, executed as a deed, supported by material financial disclosure, and each partner would need their own independent legal advice. Notably, the 28 day cooling off period proposed for nuptial agreements would not apply here.

That disclosure requirement is the part people underestimate. Whether you are opting out of a future scheme or sorting out a separation today, an agreement built on an incomplete picture of the finances is the one most likely to fall apart later. Our guide to financial disclosure covers what a full picture actually looks like.

Not everyone supports it

The final week of the consultation brought sharp disagreement. Crossbench peer Baroness Ruth Deech argued that the proposals amount to a profound constitutional change without a public mandate, on the basis that marriage and civil partnership are chosen, while these obligations would arise automatically. She pointed to a Survation poll of more than 2,000 UK adults in which 72 per cent said they knew little about the proposals, and only 37 per cent supported them once they were explained. Her preferred alternative is a simple statutory opt in, where couples choose to take on the rights rather than having to contract out of them.

Others questioned the detail rather than the principle. Law firm Birketts described the three year qualifying period as arbitrary and insufficient, and argued that better public understanding of the existing law would do more good than wholesale reform. The Society of Pension Professionals used its response to press for pensions to be given equal prominence in family law. The Law Society supported bringing court principles into statute, while its president Mark Evans warned that survivors of abuse need access to legal aid if the reform is to mean anything in practice.

When could this actually become law?

There is no date. The consultation document says responses will inform the development of legislation, and that any legislation will be introduced when parliamentary time allows. That phrase carries no timetable, and a Bill would still need to pass through both Houses before anything took effect. Reform of this size has been recommended before, in 2007, and has sat unlegislated ever since.

The practical takeaway is that you cannot plan around a scheme that does not exist yet. If you are separating from a partner you were not married to, the law that applies to you is the law described further up this page.

How this affects your situation

If you are separating now, work from today’s law. Your claim, if you have one, comes from property law and from provision for your children, not from the length of the relationship. Our guide for unmarried couples, property and children sets out where you stand and what is realistically negotiable.

Get the finances on paper before you argue about them. Most disputes between cohabiting couples turn on who paid what, and when. Our free Financial Disclosure Checklist gives you the list of documents to gather, and it is the same list a mediator or a solicitor will ask for.

An agreement you reach yourselves still needs to be made to stick. Cohabiting couples do not get a consent order in the way divorcing couples do, so the route to something enforceable is different. Our guide to making an agreement legally binding explains the options.

Jess’s view

“The conversation I have most often with people who were never married goes something like this: we were together eleven years, we raised two children in that house, and I have just been told I have no claim on it. That is the current law, and it lands very hard on people who genuinely believed otherwise. So I welcome the direction of this consultation. What I would say to anyone reading it hopefully is that nothing has changed yet, and it may be years before it does. Sort out your separation on the law as it stands, and get whatever you agree written down properly, because that is the part you can control today.”

Jess Knauf, Director of Client Strategy, Mediate UK