If you’re not married or in a civil partnership, you have no automatic legal rights to your partner’s assets or property when your relationship ends.
Your partner doesn’t have to make regular support payments to you (maintenance) or a lump sum settlement. However, if you have children, the other parent does have to contribute to your child’s living costs. See our Children section for more details.
It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been together – the law doesn’t give the same rights and protections to cohabiting couples as it does to married couples. Many people are surprised to learn that in England and Wales there’s no such thing as ‘common law marriage’.
This means that there’s no formal process to dividing things up.