Living Together — Making Agreements

Sometimes you can prevent conflict about your property, savings, and debts if your relationship breaks up by making a written agreement with your spouse. These are usually called cohabitation, marriage, or prenuptial agreements. You can make them before or while you live together, just in case you break up.

When can you make an agreement?

You can make an agreement:

• before you start to live together or get married,
• any time while you live together or during your marriage, and
• after you separate. This agreement is usually called a separation agreement.

An agreement is legally binding when you sign it, so it’s important to consider whether you need one. It’s a good idea to get legal advice about your situation if you can before you sign an agreement.

See Living Apart - Separation for more about separation agreements

Do you need an agreement while you live together?

Before deciding whether you need a written agreement while you live together, consider what the law says and whether you want to agree to something different. It’s really important to get legal advice.

The Family Law Act supports the idea of an economic partnership and recognizes different roles and contributions of partners, including non-financial contributions, if people separate. Many people don’t write an agreement while they live together and are comfortable with this law applying to their situation if they separate.

The law tries to balance supporting healthy relationships by recognizing economic partnerships and obligations to each other, while recognizing what you each brought into the relationship. Make sure you’re clear about what property each of you brought into your relationship.

If you don’t own much or don’t have any large debts, you might not need an agreement.

It might be helpful to have an agreement while you live together if:

• One of you has a lot more assets or debts than the other. For example, if one of you owns property or has a large amount of savings, got an inheritance, or has a huge student loan.
• You’re older and close to retirement.
• You have significantly different incomes.
• You have children from another relationship (including adult children who you want to provide for in the future).

It’s important to remember that an agreement you make while living together can’t restrict any future support arrangements. Also, an agreement could be set aside (cancelled) by the court if it’s found to be unfair.

Sharing information before making an agreement

Before you make an agreement, you and your spouse must share all the important information you need to make a fair agreement. This includes financial information about your income, expenses, assets, and debts available in your income tax returns, bank statements, and other financial documents. The law says you must give your spouse ​“full and true information” to resolve a family law dispute. This applies to any agreement you make while you’re living together and family law agreements you make after you separate. If you hold back information, a court can take various steps, including setting aside (cancelling) your agreement, ordering you to provide the missing information and documents, or ordering you to pay a fine or the other person’s legal costs.

What an agreement can cover

Your cohabitation, prenuptial, or marriage agreement can be about what happens while you live together and what happens if you separate. However, you can only make agreements about your children after you separate. The courts will not accept an agreement that limits spousal support or child support.

Dividing family property, assets, and debts

It can be hard to talk about finances, and money is often a huge source of conflict in relationships. It’s important to have conversations about your shared values.

It’s helpful to be clear about the financial value of what you each brought into the relationship, and what debt each of you had. This makes it easier to divide family property fairly if you separate.

One way to do this is to take a ​“snapshot” of each person’s finances when you start to live together. You can do this by taking photos of current bank statements or by making a dated record of the amounts of savings, the amount owing on loans, the value of any investments, and the value of any property, like a home or apartment that one of you might own. It’s helpful to do this whether or not you decide to make an agreement.

You can decide together:

• who brought what into the relationship.
• how you’ll share household expenses.
• whether you’ll have separate or joint bank accounts and credit cards.
• how you’ll share any new debt you take on together under both your names.
• who’s responsible for debts either of you take on under your own name before or during your relationship.

Before you sign an agreement 

Signed agreements are legally binding. It’s a good idea for both you and your spouse to see a lawyer to make sure your agreement is fair and meets legal requirements before you sign it. It’s especially important to see a lawyer if you or your spouse has a pension plan. It’s complicated to calculate the value of a pension, because even a low-paying job can have a large pension if a spouse has had the job for many years.

How to make an agreement before or while you live together