Rights and duties of cohabitants

A cohabitation deed gives you rights and duties much like those of married people, though not identical. This page summarises them.

Your rights

A cohabitant has:

• The home. A right of habitation in the cohabitation home. A cohabitant is treated as a tenant for all purposes of the law in relation to any lease of the home that either of you signs after the deed.
• Work and family leave. The same rights as a married person or a person in a civil union in matters of labour and family, including various kinds of leave, with certain exceptions.
• Medical decisions. The right to take decisions about the medical care of the other cohabitant.
• If your partner dies. A right of habitation for twelve months over the cohabitation home, where the deceased owned it in full ownership or emphyteusis, alone or jointly. It ends if the survivor marries, enters a civil union or starts cohabiting with someone else.
• Social security. The Act gives cohabitants a wide range of rights under the Social Security Act, including widow’s pension, age pension, sickness, unemployment, maternity and children’s allowances, and others, in the circumstances the Social Security Act sets out.
• Your children. The right to have your dependent children live with you in the cohabitation home, unless a court orders otherwise.

Your duties

• Equal rights and responsibilities. Cohabitants have equal rights and responsibilities and a duty to support each other morally and materially.
• Supporting each other and the family. Each of you must maintain the other and contribute to the family’s needs, in proportion to your means and ability to work, inside or outside the home. This duty ends when the cohabitation is dissolved.
• Your children. You must look after, maintain, instruct and educate your dependent children, which continues beyond eighteen for children under twenty-three in full-time education or training, or with a disability.

The cohabitation home

You decide where it is by common accord, in line with your needs and the family’s overriding interest. If one of you owns the home, or part of it, that person can transfer their right over it only with the other’s consent, or with the court’s authority if consent is unreasonably withheld, or in a judicial sale at a creditor’s request. A cohabitant who did not consent to a transfer can bring an action to annul it within one year of registration.

If you are not married and have no deed

You do not have these rights, apart from the limited rights described on our page about cohabitation.