In this article we look at what to do about finances if you aren’t married and split up.
At ProMediate we mediate a lot of different types of dispute, including inheritance and workplace but we are also seeing an increase in TOLATA claims between unmarried couples arguing over a property or finances.
Is it any wonder that more people are cohabiting and people often decide it isn’t worth getting married? The statistics show that marriage really is the triumph of hope over experience. For some people the dream wedding, which is soon over and costs a lot of money, turns into a nightmare after about 11 years!i
What is also clear is that since the introduction of no fault divorce last year, divorce is much easier than before and numbers of divorces are likely to increase.
The divorce rate in the United Kingdom is estimated at 42%.
Over 100,000 British couples got a divorce in 2019.
The average length of marriage in the UK at the time of divorce for opposite-sex couples is 11.9 years
It is no longer necessary to allege unreasonable behaviour
Adultery is responsible for 14% of the United Kingdom’s divorces.
Same-sex marriages can’t file for divorce on the grounds of adultery.
Only 1% of UK marriages end because of desertion.
The divorce rate in the United Kingdom is estimated at 42%.
The average length of marriage in the UKat the time of divorce for opposite-sex couples is 11.9 years.
The average UK divorce age is 43.9 for women and 46.4 for men.
A UK couple spends an average of £14,561 to get a divorce.
Legal fees are the most common divorce cost in the UK, encountered by 54% of couples.
The average UK divorce age is 43.9 for women and 46.4 for men.
For couples who decide to move in together, just over half of them marry within five years. Within that same time period, 40 percent of couples split up. Roughly 10 percent of them continue to live together without being married.
Cohabiting couples now account for over half of family breakdown despite making up only a fifth of parents, a report by Marriage Foundation has found.
The Marriage Foundation has shown that around one per cent (1.3 per cent) of married parents split in the course of a year, compared to over five per cent (5.3 per cent) of cohabiting parents.
The number of cohabiting couples has reached almost 1.3 million (1.26 million), up from 950,000 in 2006, with the number of married parents relatively stable on 4.8 million.
The increase in the proportion of cohabiting couples means they have now overtaken married couples in the numbers that split up.
By the time they turned 14, almost half (46 per cent) of first-born children no longer lived with both their mother and father, the Marriage Foundation found.
This comprised 19 per cent of teenagers born to single parents, 14 per cent whose parents had divorced and another 13 per cent whose parents had split up.
But among the 54 per cent still in a stable household, a stark divide emerged. The overwhelming majority (84 per cent) of parents who were still together were married, while just 16 per cent were unmarried, data from the Millennium Cohort Study which followed 18,000 families showed.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12329519/Married-couples-far-likely-time-children-teenagers-unmarried-parents-half-14-year-olds-no-longer-live-mother-father.html
The problem is that as an unmarried couple there are no automatic rights to anything unless a property is owned jointly.
It is a fact that cohabiting parents are more likely to split up than married parents throughout the developed world and across education groups.
It is also true that cohabiting as opposed to divorcing couples are four times more likely to split up.
The total number of cohabiting couples has increased from around 1.5 million in 1996 to around 3.6 million in 2021, an increase of 144%. In 2021, 22% of couples who lived together were cohabiting rather than married or in a civil partnership. Trends differ between opposite-sex and same-sex cohabiting couples.
Lawyers recommend cohabitation agreements but in reality next to no one bothers.
What people don’t realise is that there is no such thing as a common law marriage. it doesn’t matter if you’ve been living with your partner for 1 week or 50 years
We have seen disputes about personal items such as an engagement ring or even the family pet, which is a chattel! Some people think there should be a pet court to determine ownership after a split. The main asset is normally the property.
If you aren’t married or in a civil partnership, you have no automatic legal right to the assets of your partner which, if you’ve been living in his or her house, can leave you without a home and in financial peril.
You may have a claim in certain circumstances and this is when couples make what is known as TOLATA claims against each other, claiming an interest in the house.
When a married couple or a couple in a civil partnership separate or get a divorce, the house is usually treated as a shared asset, even if it is in the name of just one of the couples. For unmarried couples, this is not the case. Ownership of Property in that instance can be complicated. The starting point is to look at the legal ownership of the Property. If the Property is in joint names then often, but not always, the starting point is an equal share. If the Property is one partner’s name then the starting point is that they are entitled to the whole of it but the other partner may be able to pursue a claim for an interest in certain circumstances.
Depending on the circumstances and contributions made, you may be able to claim a portion of the sale price if you can prove that you have contributed to the mortgage, the initial deposit or paid for any significant work on the house such as an extension.
If you have a joint mortgage and the relationship breaks down, then it is normal practice to try and transfer the mortgage so only one partner has their name on it. Otherwise it is difficult for the partner who has left and is still liable to obtain a new mortgage.
However, this very much depends on the financial circumstances of the couple and the terms on which the relationship ends.
When a cohabiting couple split up and the partner with the liability of making the mortgage payments is the one that has left the home, it’s very common for mortgage payments to stop. This can leave the partner that doesn’t own the property and has no legal rights to the property in a difficult financial situation.
if the property is repossessed and sold then both parties can be liable for the shortfall if there is negative equity.
The partner living in the property may wish to make the payments on behalf of their ex-partner, to avoid the house being repossessed, however, the mortgage lender has no legal obligation to accept such payments. In this situation, the cohabitant can try to get an occupation order to give them the right to pay the mortgage without being liable for it, unless the court decides to transfer the liability of the mortgage temporarily.
Should the property be in the name of just one of the partners but as a joint mortgage, both are jointly and independently liable for the mortgage payments, regardless of who remains in the property. Therefore, if a partner leaves and stops paying for the mortgage, the remaining partner would be asked by the lender to cover the full mortgage payment and cannot claim that they are only responsible for a proportion of the payment. This can leave the remaining partner in a difficult financial situation if they cannot afford the mortgage payments on their own.
Although cohabitating couples do have legal protection in some areas, such as under the law relating to domestic abuse, cohabitation gives no general legal status to a couple, unlike marriage and civil partnership from which many legal rights and responsibilities flow. Many people are unaware this is the case.
The Law Commission recommended changing the law but this has not happened. There is a lot of resistance to giving unmarried partners the same rights as married couples because then what would be the point of getting married?
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn03372/
What we do recommend if you split up and you or your ex partner make a claim is mediation. As with divorce, mediation can be a good way to try to come to a binding agreement sorting out the finances. At ProMediate we deal with a lot of these disputes virtually so it is not necessary to even meet your ex and you can save a lot of money and stress involved in legal proceedings.
Nearly two-thirds of divorce petitions in opposite-sex marriages are filed by the wife.
The oronavirus pandemic caused a 95% increase in divorce inquiries.