Roughly 3.5 million couples across the UK are living together without being married or in a civil partnership.
That’s double the number of couples who were doing so 30 years ago. And while a large portion of these people assume that living together for a long time automatically gives them the same rights as a husband or wife under a “common law marriage,” that’s a myth.
In reality, if your partner dies or the relationship falls apart, you can easily find yourself left with absolutely nothing, regardless of how many decades you’ve spent building a life together or paying into a shared household. It’s a brutal wake-up call that catches thousands of families out every single year, but a major change in the law could finally be about to change the game for cohabiting couples.
Currently, the law is not on the side of unmarried couples.
Under existing law in England and Wales, unmarried partners have no automatic legal right to inherit from each other, regardless of how long they’ve been together or whether they have children. If a partner dies without a will specifically naming the other, the surviving partner can be left with no entitlement to the home they share, savings, or any other assets.
The same gap exists when relationships end. Unlike divorce, where defined rules determine how assets are split, unmarried couples who separate have no automatic right to share what they’ve built together. This can leave one person, often the one who earned less or gave up work to raise children, in a very difficult financial position through no fault of their own.
The government is now proposing something new.
The government launched a consultation on June 5, 2026 to explore reforming cohabitation rights, with the consultation running for ten weeks until August 14. The aim is to create a legal safety net for couples who live together long-term but haven’t married or entered a civil partnership.
Under the proposals, couples would need to meet certain criteria to qualify for these new protections. The suggested minimum is three years of living together, unless the couple have children, in which case the threshold wouldn’t apply in the same way. The framework would apply automatically to eligible couples, though both partners would have the option to opt out if they agreed to do so.
How would the three-year rule would work in practice?
Working out exactly when the three-year period begins could be complicated, particularly for couples who move in gradually, spend only part of the week together, or keep separate homes during the early stages of a relationship. The consultation acknowledges this and suggests a checklist of factors to assess whether a relationship genuinely qualifies.
These factors would include things like the degree of permanence in the arrangement, whether the couple are in a committed relationship, and how the relationship appears to others. Similar frameworks already exist in UK legislation around adoption, and many other countries have already introduced comparable protections for cohabiting couples.
This is financially important for women in particular.
Research from Women’s Aid found that leaving a long-term partner can cost around £50,000, covering the cost of setting up a new home and managing the financial fallout of separation. A separate report found that up to three-quarters of women said they had stayed in a relationship specifically because of the financial consequences of leaving.
While financial abuse affects both men and women, the lack of legal protection for cohabiting couples can trap people in difficult or even harmful situations because walking away is simply unaffordable. The proposed changes are partly aimed at removing that barrier by ensuring people have some financial footing when a long-term relationship ends.
What these new rights would and wouldn’t cover
The proposed framework is deliberately narrower than the rights that come with marriage or civil partnership. The government has been clear that the intention is to create a safety net rather than to make cohabitation legally equivalent to marriage, preserving the distinct status of marriage in law.
Shorter relationships would attract more limited awards under the proposals, and the rights on separation would be designed to offer clearer and more consistent protections without replicating everything available through divorce. The consultation is seeking views on exactly where those boundaries should sit.
Who is being consulted and what happens next?
The consultation is open to members of the public, legal professionals, academics, charities, and other organisations with a stake in how family law works. Anyone who wants to have their say has until August 14 to respond.
The government has framed this as part of a broader effort to make family law work for everyone, including those who find themselves bereaved unexpectedly or leaving a relationship under difficult circumstances. Whether the three-year threshold ends up in the final legislation, and exactly how eligibility is defined, will depend on what emerges from the consultation process over the coming weeks.
What unmarried couples should do right now
These proposals are still at consultation stage, which means current law hasn’t changed yet. Unmarried couples who want to protect each other financially right now don’t have to wait for legislation to act.
Making a will is the most straightforward way to ensure a partner inherits, since without one the rules of intestacy apply and an unmarried partner receives nothing automatically. Cohabitation agreements, which set out what happens to shared assets if the relationship ends, are also worth considering for couples who own property together or have much different financial contributions to the household.
