A cohabitation agreement in Maryland is a written contract between unmarried partners that sets out who owns what, how shared expenses get paid, what happens to the home and other property if you split up, and whether one partner owes the other any financial support afterward. Maryland does not recognize common-law marriage, so no amount of time living together gives you automatic rights to your partner’s property, income, or estate. The agreement fills that gap by creating terms a Maryland court will enforce under ordinary contract law.
Without one, the default rules are harsh. If your partner dies without a will, Maryland’s intestate succession statute sends everything to blood relatives in a fixed order — surviving spouse, then children, then parents, then siblings. An unmarried partner inherits nothing, no matter how long you’ve been together.1Maryland General Assembly. Maryland Code Estates and Trusts 3-101 If your partner is hospitalized and can’t speak for themselves, Maryland’s Health Care Decisions Act places an unregistered partner at the bottom of the surrogate decision-maker list, below adult children, parents, and siblings, and only after submitting an affidavit about contact and familiarity with the patient’s values.2Maryland General Assembly. Maryland Code Health-General 5-605 – Surrogate Decision Making A sibling your partner hasn’t spoken to in years could outrank you in the room.
What Maryland Courts Will Enforce
There’s no special cohabitation statute in Maryland. Courts treat these agreements like any other private contract: if both partners consented, exchanged something of value, and the terms don’t violate public policy, a judge will hold you to the deal.
Every contract needs consideration. Sharing living expenses, agreeing to manage joint property, or committing to financial support all qualify, and judges don’t scrutinize whether the bargain was perfectly fair. What will sink the agreement is any term where the exchange comes down to sexual services. Courts refuse to enforce contracts built on intimacy as the basis of the bargain, treating them as contrary to public policy.
Put everything in writing. Maryland does recognize express oral contracts for dividing personal property, but the state’s Statute of Frauds requires any agreement involving an interest in real property to be in writing and signed by the person being held to it. Even for terms that don’t technically require writing, an oral promise about who keeps the furniture is almost impossible to prove two years into a dispute.
Disclose Finances Before You Sign
Full financial disclosure before signing isn’t a statutory requirement, but skipping it is one of the fastest ways to get the contract thrown out later. If a partner can later show they didn’t know about a significant asset or debt when they agreed to the terms, a court may find the consent wasn’t informed. Attach a written summary of each person’s income, assets, and liabilities as an exhibit to the signed agreement. That creates a clear record that both of you went in with open eyes.
What to Put in the Agreement
Vague intentions about fairness won’t hold up. The value of these documents comes from concrete terms, written in enough detail that two people reading them a decade later couldn’t credibly disagree about what was meant.
Property Each Partner Brings In
List what each person owns going in. Real property deeds, vehicles, investment and retirement accounts, and valuable personal items like jewelry or art should be identified by owner. Anything acquired before the relationship stays that person’s separate property unless the agreement says otherwise. For property acquired during the relationship, decide in advance whether it belongs to the buyer, is shared equally, or is divided by contribution. Name specific items. “The 2024 Honda Civic titled in Partner A’s name” is enforceable; “our cars” is not.
Shared Expenses
Define how you’ll split recurring costs: rent or mortgage, utilities, groceries, insurance, maintenance. Some couples go 50/50, others allocate proportionally to income. Either works as long as it’s written down. Build in a way to adjust the split if circumstances change, so a job loss or a significant raise doesn’t leave both partners stuck with terms that no longer make sense.
Support After a Breakup
Maryland law does not provide alimony or spousal support to unmarried partners when they separate. If you want one partner to receive transitional financial support, the cohabitation agreement is the only way to create that obligation. Spell out the amount or calculation method, the duration, and the events that end the payments — such as the recipient moving in with a new partner or earning above a stated income.
The Shared Home
This is where most cohabitation disputes land. If one partner owned the home before the relationship and the other contributed to mortgage payments, renovations, or maintenance, those contributions do not automatically create an ownership interest under Maryland law. The agreement should address whether the contributing partner earns equity over time, gets reimbursed for specific expenses, or is simply covering their share of housing costs with no ownership claim. If you buy a home together, define the ownership split and what happens if one partner wants to sell and the other doesn’t.
How the Deed and Bank Accounts Are Titled
How you hold property matters as much as what the agreement says about it, and Maryland’s default rule surprises many unmarried couples.
Maryland presumes co-owned property is held as tenants in common unless the deed explicitly states otherwise. Under tenancy in common, each person owns a defined share, and when one owner dies, that share passes through their estate — to whoever inherits under their will, or to blood relatives under intestacy. The surviving partner gets nothing automatically.
Joint tenancy with right of survivorship works differently. When one joint tenant dies, the other automatically receives full ownership outside of probate. Maryland requires the deed to expressly create a joint tenancy; if the language isn’t explicit, courts default to tenancy in common. If survivorship matters to you, confirm the deed says exactly that, and address the arrangement in the cohabitation agreement too.
Bank accounts work on a parallel logic. Living together doesn’t make you responsible for your partner’s individual debts, and your wages can’t be garnished for them so long as your finances stay separate. That separation collapses the moment you co-sign a loan, open a joint account, or share a credit card. With a joint account, both partners are equally liable for all account activity, and either person can withdraw every dollar. Specify in the agreement which accounts are joint, what each partner can use them for, and how the balance gets divided if the relationship ends.
Commingling creates its own headaches. If you deposit an inheritance into a joint checking account that both partners use for bills and groceries, you may not be able to trace those funds back as solely yours. The burden falls on the person claiming separate ownership. A clause saying “inheritances remain separate” means nothing if the inherited money flows into a joint account and gets spent on shared expenses. Write the rule, then live by it.
What a Cohabitation Agreement Cannot Do
There are hard limits on what a private contract between unmarried partners can accomplish, and misreading them leads to false security.
You cannot use a cohabitation agreement to bind a court on child custody or child support. Maryland courts decide custody based on the best interests of the child, and no private agreement overrides that standard. You can state your preferences, and a judge may consider them, but the court keeps full authority to reach a different conclusion. Child support calculations follow Maryland’s statutory guidelines regardless of what any contract says.
The agreement also can’t include terms that violate public policy. Provisions that waive a partner’s right to call the police, that penalize someone for leaving, or that condition financial obligations on continuing the intimate relationship will be struck down. Courts look at the whole document; enough bad provisions can void the entire contract rather than just the offending clauses.
And the agreement does not control medical care or inheritance. For those, you need separate documents.
Documents to Sign Alongside the Agreement
A cohabitation agreement handles property and finances between living partners. It does not give your partner authority over your medical care or override Maryland’s intestacy rules at your death. Three other instruments close those gaps.
Healthcare and Financial Powers of Attorney
A healthcare power of attorney — sometimes called an advance directive — names your partner as the person authorized to make medical decisions if you can’t. It overrides Maryland’s statutory surrogate priority list entirely.2Maryland General Assembly. Maryland Code Health-General 5-605 – Surrogate Decision Making A financial power of attorney lets your partner manage bank accounts, pay bills, or handle property if you’re incapacitated. Both are standalone documents, not clauses inside the cohabitation agreement, but the agreement is a sensible place to note that each of you has executed them and where the originals are kept.
A Will or Trust
If you want your partner to inherit from you, you need a will or trust that says so. The cohabitation agreement cannot override Maryland’s intestate succession rules, and under those rules an unmarried partner is not in the line of succession at all.1Maryland General Assembly. Maryland Code Estates and Trusts 3-101 Without a will, your estate could pass to a parent or sibling while your partner of twenty years receives nothing.
Beneficiary designations on retirement accounts, life insurance, and payable-on-death bank accounts pass outside of probate and outside your will, so update them separately. Naming your partner as beneficiary is often the simplest way to make sure specific assets reach them without court involvement.
Registered Domestic Partnership
Maryland offers a registered domestic partnership that adds a narrow but meaningful safety net on the estate side. To qualify, both partners must be at least 18, not married or in another domestic partnership, and not related within four degrees of consanguinity.3Maryland General Assembly. Maryland Code Health-General 6-101 – Domestic Partnership Registration is filed with the local Register of Wills.
If a registered partner dies without a will, the survivor is treated the same as a surviving spouse for intestate succession, including the right to serve as personal representative, the $10,000 spousal allowance, and the same share of the probate estate. The surviving registered domestic partner is also exempt from Maryland inheritance tax.4Registers of Wills of Maryland. Registered Domestic Partnerships in Maryland Registration complements the cohabitation agreement and a will; it does not replace either.
Signing, Notarizing, and Storing the Agreement
The agreement must be in writing and signed by both partners to be enforceable for any term involving real property. Oral agreements about personal property are technically valid under Maryland law, but proving what was said years later is a fight most people lose.
Notarization is not strictly required for the contract to be valid, but it’s strongly recommended. A notary witnessing both signatures eliminates later arguments about whether someone actually signed or was coerced. Maryland notaries can charge up to $8 per signature for an in-person notarial act, or up to $30 for a remote notarization performed through video technology.5Maryland Secretary of State. Notary Division If the notary certifies both signatures on the original and a copy, expect $8 per signature on the first document and $4 per signature on additional copies of the same record.
Each partner should keep an original signed copy. Store them somewhere secure but accessible, such as a fireproof safe or a safe deposit box, and keep related documents like powers of attorney and wills together. Tell someone you trust where to find them.
Attorney costs for drafting or reviewing a cohabitation agreement typically run from roughly $370 to $570 nationally, with Maryland rates varying by complexity and the attorney’s experience. Having each partner consult a separate attorney before signing reduces the risk of a later challenge that one of you didn’t understand the terms or was pressured into signing.
If You End Up in Court
If the relationship ends and you can’t settle a property or financial dispute, Maryland courts apply standard contract interpretation. The judge reads the written document and enforces what it says. There’s no equitable distribution process like in divorce, and no family court jurisdiction. You’re in civil court making a contract claim.
Courts focus on the language within the four corners of the document. Clear terms get enforced as written, without outside evidence of what the parties supposedly intended. Ambiguous language gets interpreted against the drafter, which is one more reason both partners should have independent legal review before signing.
For property not covered by the agreement, Maryland’s general civil law applies. Usually that means whoever holds title or can prove ownership keeps the asset. Joint bank account balances are presumed to belong equally to both account holders. Assets with no clear paper trail — furniture bought with cash, improvements made to a partner’s home — are the hardest to resolve and the most common source of post-breakup litigation. The more specific your agreement, the less a court has to guess.