Unmarried Couples: Why Living Together Without an Estate Plan Is High Risk
If you’re cohabitating, sharing expenses, or building a life with a partner without a marriage certificate, unmarried, you’ve likely settled into a comfortable rhythm. You share keycodes, passwords, grocery lists, and maybe even a mortgage.
However, the legal system views your relationship through a starkly different lens one with more risk. Under California state laws, an unmarried partner is legally classified as a stranger in the eyes of the probate court. Without explicit legal documentation, the law defaults to biological family or legal next-of-kin.
If you want your partner, not a stranger or estranged relative, to be the one who makes medical healthcare decisions in a crisis or the one to inherit your home, then you need to create your own safety net, called a trust.
The Default Risk: What Happens Without a Plan?
When a married person becomes incapacitated or passes away without a will, the law automatically steps in to transfer rights, property, and decision-making authority to the next of kin, in a marriage, that would be the surviving spouse. However, for unmarried couples these automatic protections do not exist.
- Hospital/Medical Choices: Medical providers are bound by HIPAA privacy laws. Without written authorization, doctors turn to parents, adult children, or siblings for medical decisions as dictated by law, leaving your partner out of treatment choices or even hospital visitations.
- Inheritance Loss: Without a valid will or trust, assets pass via state laws directly to next of kin (i.e. closest relative). An unmarried partner will inherit nothing, regardless of whether you were together for five years or thirty. So those bank accounts will go to your parents or siblings instead of your significant other.
- Housing: If a home is titled solely in one partner’s name, the surviving partner has no legal right to stay in the home if the owner passes away. The property automatically transfers to the deceased partner’s biological heirs, who can evict the surviving partner. This becomes heartbreaking especially when the partner has spent years paying down the mortgage or helping with maintenance of the home.
A decedent’s last will and testament must go through probate. For unmarried couples facing potential pushback from non-supportive relatives, a Revocable Living Trust keeps your financial affairs private and transfers assets directly to your surviving partner without court intervention and without the need for a marriage license.
We’re Here to Help
If you are ready to put a reliable plan in place or wish to verify that your existing documents were executed correctly from the start, we invite you to contact our office to schedule a free telephone consultation.
