A Cohabitation Agreement That Protected Two Families at Once

The situation

Tarek, a software developer, and Karim, a construction project manager, had been together for just over two years when they decided to sell Tarek's condo and buy a house together in Richmond Hill. Tarek had an eleven-year-old daughter, Amalia, from a previous relationship, and owned his condo outright after years of paying down the mortgage. Karim had no children and had built up a sizeable investment portfolio through a decade of steady contributions and some well-timed early investments.

Both were in their late thirties, both had assets they had built before meeting each other, and both wanted the new house to feel like a shared home rather than a source of future anxiety. Tarek's biggest concern was Amalia. He wanted to know that whatever happened between him and Karim, the value he had built in the condo — and whatever he later left behind — would still find its way to her. Karim's concern was more practical: he was about to put a large share of his investment savings into a down payment on a jointly owned property with a partner he was not married to, and he had no idea what that meant legally.

What was at stake

In Ontario, the property rules that automatically divide a married couple's assets on separation do not apply to unmarried partners in the same way. Common-law partners generally keep what they brought into the relationship and what they earn or acquire in their own name during it, subject to a partner's ability to argue for a share based on contributions to a jointly held asset or to the relationship as a whole. That sounds protective on its face, but the moment two people buy a house together and register it in both names, the analysis changes: a jointly titled home is jointly owned property, regardless of who paid what, unless the parties have agreed otherwise in writing.

Tarek's plan was to put the full proceeds from selling his condo — built up over years, well before he met Karim — toward the down payment on the new house. Without an agreement, that money would effectively become a joint asset the moment it went into a house titled in both names. If the relationship ended later, Karim could have a claim to half the equity in the home, including the portion that traced back to Tarek's pre-relationship condo. Conversely, Karim's investment contributions toward renovations, furnishings and the mortgage would also blur into shared property with no clear record of what belonged to whom going in.

There was a second layer specific to Tarek's situation. Under Ontario's Family Law Act, spouses have support obligations to each other on separation, and common-law partners who have lived together long enough or have a child together can also face spousal support claims. Tarek and Karim did not have a child together, but Tarek wanted certainty that if the relationship broke down, his obligations to Karim would not come at the expense of what he could eventually pass on to Amalia. Without a written agreement addressing property division and clarifying expectations around support, all of this would be left to be argued about later, based on years of commingled finances and imperfect memories of who paid for what.

What we did

1. Started the conversation months before the move, not the week before. Tarek and Karim came to us about four months before their planned closing date. That gave enough time for full financial disclosure, negotiation and independent legal advice without the pressure of a looming deadline — pressure that, if present, can later be used to argue an agreement was signed under duress and should be set aside.
2. Required full and honest financial disclosure from both sides. A cohabitation agreement is only as strong as the disclosure behind it. Each of them prepared a sworn statement of their assets, debts and income: Tarek's condo sale proceeds, savings and RRSP; Karim's investment accounts, savings and a small line of credit. Full disclosure at the outset is what allows an agreement to hold up later if it is ever challenged — a court asked to enforce or set aside a domestic contract looks closely at whether each party actually knew what the other owned.
3. Traced Tarek's condo equity as excluded property. The agreement specified that the funds Tarek contributed to the down payment, traceable to the sale of his pre-relationship condo, would remain his separate property even though the new house would be registered in joint names. If the relationship ended, that traced amount would come off the top of the sale proceeds before any equal division of the remaining equity.
4. Built in a mechanism for Karim's contributions too. The agreement was not one-sided. It also recorded Karim's investment contribution to the down payment as his separate, traceable amount, and set out how the couple would document future contributions to the mortgage, property taxes and major renovations, so that neither of them would need to reconstruct years of bank statements if they ever separated.
5. Addressed support directly rather than trying to eliminate it. Ontario courts can decline to enforce a contract term that tries to fully waive spousal support in a way that produces an unfair result at the time enforcement is sought, particularly where circumstances have changed significantly. Rather than attempting a blanket waiver, the agreement set out a formula tied to the length of the relationship and each partner's income at separation, giving both of them predictability without inviting a court to strike the clause down entirely.
6. Made room for Amalia's future without controlling Tarek's will. A cohabitation agreement cannot dictate the contents of a will, but it can record both partners' shared understanding. The agreement confirmed that Tarek's excluded condo equity, and its traceable growth, would remain his to direct as he chose, including through his estate planning for Amalia, and that Karim had no expectation of a claim against those specific funds.
7. Insisted on independent legal advice for Karim. We acted for Tarek in drafting the agreement and Karim retained his own independent lawyer to review it and advise him separately. This is not a formality — an agreement negotiated without independent advice on both sides is significantly more vulnerable to being set aside later, and the certificate of independent legal advice becomes part of the permanent record of how the agreement came to be signed.

The outcome

The agreement was finalized and signed roughly six weeks before closing, well ahead of the sale of Tarek's condo and the purchase of the new house. Both transactions proceeded on schedule. The house closed with Tarek's roughly $310,000 in traced condo equity and Karim's roughly $140,000 investment contribution both recorded in the agreement's schedules, alongside the couple's agreed approach to the remaining mortgage they would carry jointly.

Two years later, the couple is still together, still living in the Richmond Hill house, and the agreement has done exactly what it was meant to do: it has not been needed in a dispute, but it removed a source of quiet anxiety for both of them. Tarek was able to update his will with confidence that his condo equity, now folded into the house, would flow to Amalia as intended if something happened to him, without a fight over what portion of the house was ever his to leave. Karim has the same clarity about his own contribution. Neither partner has had to wonder, during ordinary arguments about renovations or budgets, what would happen to the house if things ever went sideways — because that question was already answered, calmly, before they ever moved a box into the new home.

What you can learn from this