Increase in cohabitation comes at a cost

The ONS has published details of living arrangements, highlighting that 60.5% of the adult population were married or cohabiting in 2024.

The data showed that a quarter (25.1%) of those aged 16 to 29 years lived in a couple, compared to over 70% of those aged 30-64.

Meanwhile, 36.8% of people had never married or been in a civil partnership – up from 33.9% a decade earlier. It was highlighted that 12.9% of people were cohabiting without getting married – up from 11.9% a decade earlier – a rise from 5.5 million to 6.5 million people.

Helen Morrissey, Head of Retirement Analysis at Hargreaves Lansdown said “Cohabitation has surged in popularity in recent years as people decide to live with their partner before taking the plunge and getting married. For others, it’s a more than adequate alternative to an expensive wedding and they opt to live together for the long term. However, it’s important to understand the potential impacts this can have on your financial planning. Many people operate under the myth that once you’ve lived together for a period of time you acquire some kind of common-law status. This is not the case, and people can live together for decades and bring up children and find that if they split up or if one partner dies their finances are ruined.

“A cohabiting partner has no automatic rights to their partner’s assets in the same way a spouse or civil partner would. This means that they wouldn’t be able to benefit from inheriting their partner’s unused nil rate bands for inheritance tax purposes, for instance, and if their partner dies without a Will then they could be placed in real financial difficulties.”

Sarah Coles, Head of Personal Finance at Hargreaves Lansdown said “Living together can make a split quicker and less complicated, but it can still be a financial nightmare, because when you cohabit, you don’t have the same rights as a married couple. It means that if you split up and one of you owns the house in their name, the other may have no right to a share of the property. If one of you has sacrificed their career for caring responsibilities, they have no right to spousal maintenance. If you have taken on debts or hold savings unevenly, there’s no automatic right to have this balanced out.

“The older you are, the more complicated things can be, because you may have more assets, and you might have a family. Almost 2 million people in their 30s are cohabiting, over three quarters of a million are doing so in their 40s, more than half a million in their 50s, and even 47,922 in their 70s or older. It means than anyone living with a partner without wanting to tie the knot needs to be aware of the risks involved.”