Legal services for unmarried couples

Our family law solicitors provide a range of legal services for unmarried couples living together – including cohabitation agreements, parental rights and legal rights if the relationship ends.

Rights of unmarried couples living together

If you are unmarried and living together, you’re a cohabiting couple. Cohabiting couples don’t have the same rights as married couples, and this lack of legal rights can become an issue if you split up, have children or buy a house together.

Our guide to the rights of unmarried couples living together covers more detail about the rights of unmarried people.

We can help you with:

A cohabitation agreement which can help protect you and any children you have

If you separate, we can help:

Sort out child custody
agree child maintenance payments if you separate. Child maintenance is still payable if you were unmarried; here’s some information about child maintenance and how it may be affected during Coronavirus.
enforce child maintenance payments
get parental responsibility (for example, if you’re an unmarried father)
agree which parent the children should live with
property claims for unmarried couples
divide your financial assets fairly (e.g. house, car, business, land).

The family team is very experienced, client focused and able to offer specialist advice in all areas of family law. It approaches cases pragmatically and considers all aspects of non court dispute resolution as a method to assist its clients to find resolution to issues relating to finance and child arrangements.

Legal 500 UK, 2025

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Frequently asked questions

The answers to many of your questions can be found here, please get in touch for further information.

I have been told my property has development potential. What do I do?

If you’ve been contacted by a developer or a land promoter regarding a potential development to your property, you may wish to consider granting an option agreement or a promotion agreement. An option agreement is made between the landowner and the developer, where it is intended that the developer will apply for planning permission and requires an option to buy the property. A land promotion agreement is used where a developer agrees to apply for planning permission and will market the property for sale on the open market once planning permission has been obtained. This is usually in return for a proportion of the net sale proceeds. The law on this is very complex and you will need specialist advice.

Contact us today

If you’d like to meet one of our experts for a confidential, no obligation chat, please get in touch.

Telephone

0800 013 1165

Office locations
Bishop’s Stortford
Brentwood
Cambridge
Chelmsford
North Herts
Saffron Walden

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All legal services provided by Tees are regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. Tees is a trading name of Stanley Tee LLP is authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA Number 464615) and is registered in England and Wales number OC327874.

All financial services provided by Tees are regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Tees and Tees Wealth are trading names of Tees Financial Limited which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Registered in England and Wales number 4342506. Registered office address Tees House, 95 London Road, Bishop’s Stortford CM23 3GW.

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