Your home
Deeds and titles structured so your surviving partner cannot be evicted or forced into a sale by relatives.
Estate planning for unmarried couples
Loving together. Living together. Legally strangers.
There is no such thing as a “common law marriage” in the UK. If you are cohabiting without a specialist estate plan, the law treats you as single leaving your partner vulnerable to losing everything overnight.
The invisible risk
Most unmarried couples assume they have rights. Under UK law, they have none.
Living together for years, sharing a mortgage or raising children does not give you rights similar to marriage. Cohabiting couples are legally invisible, regardless of the depth or duration of the relationship.
Die without a valid will and cohabitation plan and the state applies arbitrary rules written decades ago. Your home, accounts, investments and belongings pass to your biological family even relatives you are entirely estranged from leaving your grieving partner facing frozen accounts, immediate financial hardship and possible eviction from their own home.
In this guide
- Why there is no common law marriage
- What the rules of intestacy actually do
- Who really owns your home
- The 40% inheritance tax trap
- How to get protected in three steps
Shock fact
A lifetime of shared building can be erased by the courts in a single afternoon.
Without a protective legal framework, your assets transfer straight to relatives you may not even speak to. Don't let a sudden separation or unexpected tragedy ruin your estate plans.
What we protect
Your home and your living security
We structure your property deeds and titles so that a surviving partner cannot be legally evicted, or forced into an unwanted sale by grieving, hostile or distant in-laws.
Property is almost always the largest asset a couple shares, and it is the single most common source of dispute for unmarried survivors. Getting the title and the will working together removes that risk before it can ever arise.
- Deeds reviewed against how you actually own the home
- Severance of joint tenancy where it protects your share
- A protective will so your share goes where you intend
Our comprehensive framework
Wealth, guardianship and your medical voice
Your wealth and lifelong savings: we write protective legal mechanisms ensuring your partner is financially secure, so your hard-earned assets bypass rigid intestacy laws and go exactly where you intend.
Your children's guardianship: we formally appoint legal guardians. Without this, if both unmarried parents pass away, social services or a family court judge decides who raises your children, often triggering bitter battles between families.
Your medical and financial voice: we establish healthcare rights so that if you are in an accident, your partner is legally recognised at the hospital bedside rather than barred from the room by biological relatives.
Your options
What you can do, and when to do it
Protection is built from a small number of precise legal instruments: a protective will, often with a life interest trust, a cohabitation agreement, the right property structure and Lasting Powers of Attorney.
Which of those you need depends on your circumstances. The right combination is usually settled in a single fifteen-minute conversation.
What we protect
Four things a cohabitation plan secures
Standard, off-the-shelf wills fail unmarried partnerships because they ignore the traps that only cohabiting couples face.
Your savings
Protective mechanisms so your assets bypass intestacy and reach your partner, with the 40% tax trap mitigated.
Your children
Legal guardians formally appointed, so a judge or social services never decides who raises them.
Your medical voice
Lasting Powers of Attorney so your partner is recognised at the bedside and can manage finances if you cannot.
A common assumption
“We've been together twenty years, surely that counts for something.”
Legally, it counts for nothing. There is no threshold at which cohabitation becomes binding, which is exactly why a plan has to be written rather than assumed.
Reassurance
Specialists in the couples the law forgot
Unmarried estate planning is a specialism, not a variation on married planning. The tax rules, property rules and next-of-kin rules all behave differently.
- Confidential, no-obligation first conversation
- Fixed fees agreed before any work begins
- Documents drafted, executed under supervision and stored safely
- 40%
- Inheritance tax above the nil-rate band for unmarried partners
- £325k
- Standard threshold before that tax applies
- 0
- Automatic inheritance rights for a cohabiting partner
- 1:1
- Every plan handled by a named specialist
Explore
Continue reading
Next step
Protect the person you love most.
Don't leave your partner's future to chance and ancient laws. Book a confidential consultation with our unmarried estate specialists today.