INTRODUCTION
This section deals with the law relating to Unmarried Couples particularly their property rights. The law in this area is very complicated. If the partners in a relationship are not married but live together as husband and wife their property rights in respect of jointly owned property are covered by English property law. Much of the relevant law is "common law based". It arises from the law that has developed over the years as a result of case decisions in the Courts.UNMARRIED COUPLES
The English common law does not recognise the common law husband or wife as a separate legal entity although it does recognise "cohabitees". There is no set period of time for a couple to live together before they acquire rights.PROPERTY RIGHTS
Property rights are based on usual property law principles, e.g. if a property is in a person's name then they will usually be deemed to own it. However, the law has from time to time found a way around these so that a house bought in one partner's name might still be claimed upon by the other partner who has contributed to the price, freed the "owner" to pay the mortgage by taking on household bills, been promised or lead to believe that the house is or will be partly theirs or otherwise acted in such a way that it would be unfair to deprive them of a share.In particular, a series of cases in the 1970's established that a "common law wife" could acquire property rights by working to improve the house and garden and by bearing and bringing up the children of the "common law husband". Parliament has built on these ideas with various statutes aimed at protecting the rights of and regulating the the financial relationships between unmarried cohabitees.
We outline here some of the more important Acts of Parliament which regulate the position between unmarried couples both in respect of their conduct towards each other and their property rights.
RIGHTS WHICH APPLY TO ALL COUPLES
All couples living together as husband and wife and, arguably, gay couples have other rights under Part IV of the Family Law Act 1996. They have a right not to be evicted from the matrimonial home by the partner who owns it without a court order and to be given notice if that partner is faced with eviction proceedings because of rent or mortgage arrears. These rights need to be protected by registration at the Land Registry or the Land Charges Registry.VIOLENCE
They also have the right to go to court and to seek an injunction if their partner subjects them to violence. The injunction will always order the other partner not to assault, molest or interfere with them but may also exclude the other partner from the home or even from a specified radius of the home. An injunction can carry with it a power of arrest enabling the police to intervene if the court order is broken.CHILDREN
If there are children, a father who has obtained parental responsibility (the rights and duties of a parent) by agreement with the mother or by court order for unmarried couples or by being married to the mother in the case of married couples, has a right to contact with his children and a right to be consulted about major events or decisions relating to the children.CONTACT
The exercise of these rights can be difficult if, for example, the father has been excluded from the family home or has been ordered not to contact the mother. If a father is faced with an application by a mother for an injunction under the Family Law Act, this sort of problem needs to be considered and the judge hearing the application will need to consider whether provision should be made in the order to allow contact to continue without placing the father in breach of the injunction order itself.JOINTLY OWNED PROPERTY
The English legal system has never had any difficulty in recognising the concept of joint ownership. However, where property of any kind (real, which is to say land, or personal, which is to say any other kind of property) is owned jointly by two or more people it is deemed to be held on "trust for sale". The owners hold the legal estate in the property on trust for themselves and the presumption is that they intend to sell the property and distribute the proceeds of sale in accordance with the trust.EXAMPLE
If the property is owned in the joint names of A and B the arrangement looks like this:
Legal Estate owned by A and B on trust to sell and to divide the money between the equitable or beneficial owners who are also A and B
ENFORCING A TRUST FOR SALE
Section 30 of the Law of Property Act 1925 allows the beneficial owners to apply to the court for an order to put the trust into effect by ordering a sale of the property and a division of the proceeds. In the case of houses the shares of the parties will usually be clearly defined because the solicitor who acts for the owners at the time when they buy ought to advise on joint ownership and its effects and will usually have prepared a document setting out what the shares are (usually 50:50). The court might decline to order a sale of the property if the purpose for which the trust was created still continues. It is likely that where the parties have children, the court will declare that part of the purpose of the trust was to provide a home for the children and that until the children reach the age of 17 or, if later, leave full time education, the property should not be sold.PERSONAL PROPERTY
For personal property such as a joint bank account, valuable items, shares or anything else, which is not land, the parties may not have agreed expressly what the shares are to be. The court is then faced with the task of identifying what the intention must have been by reference to:• What was said and done from which the court can derive an often theoretical idea of what the parties intended
• What each of the parties put into the property which will be reflected in what comes back to them
• Any express agreement such as the sort of document which a solicitor might prepare at the time of setting up the arrangement or even what the parties said to each other.
EXAMPLE
For example, the bank account may have been set up in the name of one party only but on the clear understanding that the other party would be covering household expenses and bills for both so that the account holder could use all of his or her income to create a nest egg. The bill payer would be recognised as having an interest in the saver's account because he helped to provide the funds which went into it albeit indirectly or because it was stated that the money in the account was to be joint property or because he or she was misled into going along with the arrangement in anticipation of seeing some benefit.
