Cohabitation Law and Practice Handbook
An authoritative yet practical guide to cohabitation law and practice written by an expert team of practitioners. This new edition has been fully revised and expanded to support family justice professionals advising unmarried couples on complex property and trust law principles and related matters.
Available to pre-order: publication June 2025
Written by a team of experts and edited by Graeme Fraser, chair of Resolution’s cohabitation committee, this handbook provides family justice professionals with practical guidance through each stage of the process from initial instruction to final hearing of a TOLATA claim including coverage of related claims.
The handbook guides practitioners through the overarching principles of trusts law to a series of procedural chapters that provide straightforward and practical commentary on the Civil Procedure Rules (CPR) and examine the complex concepts emerging from the case law, helpfully illustrated through the use of case studies.
This edition has been updated to include:
- an analysis of recent court decisions including Hudson v Hathaway and Guest v Guest
- a new chapter on tax issues for cohabiting couples
- a new chapter on cohabiting couples in rented accommodation
- a new chapter on non-legally binding marriages following the decisions in Akhter v Khan and Tousi v Gaydukova
- an analysis of the practical use of Schedule 1 and a guide to preparing Schedule 1 orders
Contents include:
- Introduction Graeme Fraser
- Trust principles Elissa Da Costa-Waldman
- First meeting Samara Brackley
- Pre-action conduct Mike Horton KC
- The conduct of proceedings Elizabeth Darlington
- Further procedural matters Guy Holland
- Possible related proceedings Andrzej Bojarski KC and Simon Sugar
- Possible satellite issues Christopher Stirling
- Avoiding TOLATA and cohabitation disputes Jonathan Nosworthy
- Case studies Christopher Stirling
- Tax issues for family lawyers Rebecca Fisher and James Cook
- Cohabiting couple in rented accommodation Giles Peaker
- Non-legally binding marriages Dr Naheed Ghauri
- Appendices include an analysis of the practical use of Schedule 1 (Josh Viney) and a guide to preparing Schedule 1 orders (James Pirrie); precedents and worked examples