A Cohabitation Agreement is an agreement between two parties who are not married who want to live together. It’s important to get a Cohabitation Agreement if you are going to live with your boyfriend or girlfriend and you are going to acquire a property together. For example. You’re going to move in with your partner and you are going to get a house together. What are your rights and responsibilities regarding that house should you separate? It’s important to think about that now before you enter into that relationship so that you have that spelled our sot that each of you know what your responsibilities are with relationship to a house, for example.
What about cars? Maybe you’re going to accumulate a car together, or other assets. Perhaps you’re going to have a joint bank account together. Also, it’s good to have a discussion in advance regarding how are you going to pay for ongoing living expenses? How are you going to pay for the mortgage payment or your rent or your car payment or any of the other factors that you want to consider? We can put that down for you. .you can review it. It’s a Cohabitation Agreement. It’s essentially a contract between you and the other party, and it outline your rights and responsibilities.
Another reason to have a Cohabitation Agreement is to clarify that you are not, in fact, married to that other individual. Colorado does recognize common law marriage. There’s no particular time period that is needed to establish a common law marriage in Colorado, so essentially if you are cohabiting together and you present yourself to the community as husband and wife and you meet a couple of other factors, you could be considered to be in a common law relationship. Maybe you don’t want to be in a common law relationship. Maybe people think that you are married when you’re not really, in fact, intending to be married. In your cohabitation agreement, you can outline the fact that, “Hey, we’re not married and the only way we’re going to be married is if we go through a marriage ceremony and pull a marriage license.” It eliminates uncertainties in your relationship. It makes sure that you both understand what your rights and obligations are going into this.
Call me, make an appointment, come in. I can sit down, I can prepare a document for you so that you understand where you are with the other party. They understand, everyone’s on the same page. It’s worth the money spent now to get that clarified.
