While we see plenty of celebrity couples opting to cohabit rather than commit to marriages, the chances are that at least some of these relationships will be bound by a co-habitation agreement. This allows couples to work out who is entitled to what if a relationship breaks down.<\/p>\n
The number of co-habiting couples in the UK continues to rise fast. The number has almost tripled since 1996 from 1.5 million to 3.3 million and now represents 17.5% of all family arrangements in the UK.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, a significant proportion of co-habiting couples are unaware of their legal rights with 26% mistakenly believing that they have \u2018common law marriage\u2019 rights equal to those of married couples. This certainly isn\u2019t the case and if a relationship breaks down the actual status of relationships will be brought into sharp focus.<\/p>\n
If for example a co-habiting couple own their home as joint tenants, then regardless of who invested the most into the property, it would be split 50\/50 following a breakup of the relationship. 50% of a property would also be automatically be passed on to the other partner upon death.<\/p>\n
Awareness of legal rights when it comes to children in the family is also poor with 73% of respondents in one survey unaware of what support they would be entitled to when being left to bring up children.<\/p>\n
The mother and father of the children are required to contribute to the cost of bringing up children until they leave school or go on to attend University.<\/p>\n
All of these uncertainties can be avoided by putting together a co-habitation agreement which removes many of the uncertainties that exist for couples who choose not to marry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
While we see plenty of celebrity couples opting to cohabit rather than commit to marriages, the chances are that at least some of these relationships will be bound by a co-habitation agreement. This allows couples to work out who is entitled to what if a relationship breaks down. The number of co-habiting couples in the… Read More »How To Avoid A Costly Cohabitation Breakup<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[37,191,10,175],"tags":[192,169,42,11,9,19],"class_list":["post-588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cohabitation","category-cohabitation-breakup","category-family-law","category-lund-bennett","tag-cohabitation-breakup","tag-family-law","tag-family-law-lawyers-altrincham","tag-family-solicitor","tag-lund-bennett","tag-lund-bennett-law"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t