Buying Together Without Marrying: What the Split on the Deed Commits You To

The deed is the ledger, and the bank statements are not

The most common misunderstanding among unmarried buyers is that the record of payments will sort things out later. It will not, or at least not without a fight. In all three countries the register records percentages, and those percentages are what a court starts from if the relationship ends. Spanish law goes further and states the presumption explicitly: article 393 of the Civil Code says shares are presumed equal unless proved otherwise. Italian law says the same in article 1101. Proving otherwise, years later, from a mixture of transfers and cash and unrecorded work, is exactly the litigation nobody budgets for.

The fix is unglamorous and takes ten minutes at the notary's desk: state the shares in the proportion of what each person is actually putting in, including the deposit and the expected repayment split, and write down in a side agreement how the future contributions are meant to work. Deeds can carry any percentages the parties choose — sixty-forty, seventy-thirty, 63.33 and 36.67 — and there is no legal preference for round numbers.

Either of you can force a sale, and that is deliberate

Undivided co-ownership is not designed to last; every one of these legal systems treats it as a temporary state to be resolved. French article 815 opens by saying nobody can be compelled to remain in indivision and that partition may always be provoked. Spanish article 400 and Italian article 1111 say the same thing in their own words. The right is unilateral: it does not require the other owner's agreement, only a court if agreement is impossible, and the court's remedy where the asset cannot be split is to order a sale.

All three also let the co-owners contract out of it for a while. France has the convention d'indivision of articles 1873-1 and following, which can be entered into for a fixed term and renewed. Spain's article 400 expressly validates an agreement to keep the thing undivided for a determined period, renewable by fresh agreement. Italy's article 1111 does the same. If one partner is buying the home the couple's children will grow up in, that agreement is the difference between stability and a sale notice arriving in the third year — and it costs a fraction of what the litigation would.

The mortgage ignores your percentages entirely

This is where the arithmetic of the deed and the arithmetic of the loan part company. Co-borrowers on a joint mortgage are jointly and severally liable, meaning the lender can demand the whole outstanding balance from either of them. A 30 % owner who signed the loan is a 100 % debtor. If the other person loses their job, moves abroad, or simply stops paying, the bank does not read the deed; it reads the loan agreement and sends the demand to whoever is easiest to reach.

Two things follow. Buying together makes each of you a guarantor of the other's future income for the life of the loan, which is a bigger commitment than the property share suggests, and it is why lenders assess both incomes and both existing debts. And separating does not undo it: the deed can be transferred, but the loan can only be released by the bank, which will re-underwrite the remaining borrower alone and may simply refuse. Ask what the lender's conditions for a release would be before you sign, not when you need one.

When the split does not match the money, the difference is a gift

Take the numbers from the answer above. A flat costs 300,000 euros. One partner brings 90,000 euros of savings, the other brings 10,000, and a joint loan of 200,000 euros is repaid half and half. Over the life of the deal the first partner puts in 190,000 euros and the second 110,000. Written honestly, the deed should read 63.33 % and 36.67 %. Written fifty-fifty, the first partner has transferred 40,000 euros of value to the second — a transfer with no consideration, which is the legal definition of a gift.

Between unmarried partners with no family tie, that is the worst possible category to be in. France taxes gifts between people with no relationship at the top band of its scale, with no allowance at all — meaning the couple's paperwork, not their intentions, has created a liability that would not exist between a parent and a child. Spain and Italy each have their own rules for transfers between unrelated persons, and none of them is generous. The fix is free: put the real proportions in the deed at the outset. Changing them later is itself a transfer, with its own duty.

What happens if one of you dies — and why cohabitation is not a status

Without a will, an unmarried partner is a stranger to the succession in all three countries. The deceased's share does not pass to the survivor; it passes to the deceased's heirs under the intestacy rules, which usually means their children or their parents and siblings. The survivor wakes up co-owning their home with their late partner's family, subject to exactly the right described earlier: any one of those new co-owners can demand a sale.

The registered-partnership routes help less than people assume, and in one case not at all on the property question. France's PACS has not carried a default indivision since the reform of 23 June 2006, in force from 1 January 2007: the default is separation of property under article 515-5 of the Civil Code, and partners who want their acquisitions pooled must opt into the indivision regime of article 515-5-1. It does deliver the full succession exemption, but only alongside a will, because a PACS partner is still not an automatic heir. In Italy, Law 76/2016 gives civil unions the married couple's property regime but gives de facto cohabitants nothing of the sort — they may sign a cohabitation contract choosing a regime, and absent that, whatever is in one name stays in one name. Spain regulates unmarried couples region by region, which means the answer changes with the autonomous community.

Frequently asked questions

Can we own 50-50 but agree privately that one of us really owns more?

A side agreement between you is worth having and is far better than nothing, but it does not change what the register says, and it does not bind a bank, a tax office or a third-party buyer. Where the two documents conflict, the deed is what governs the property and the side agreement is a personal claim you would have to enforce. If the intention is a genuine imbalance, put it in the deed and use the side agreement for the things a deed cannot express, such as who pays for what and what happens if one of you wants out.

If one of us pays the whole mortgage, do we build up different shares over time?

No. The shares are fixed by the deed and do not move because one person pays more; what accumulates instead is a claim by the over-payer against the other, which has to be proved and quantified later, often with interest arguments attached. Some couples handle this by recording every payment; a cleaner answer is to set the deed shares to match the expected repayment split from the start, or to write an express loan between you for anything that departs from it.

Who decides on renovation work when we disagree?

Each system separates ordinary administration from acts that change the property, and requires a bigger majority for the second. The Spanish Civil Code puts administration in the hands of a majority of interests rather than a majority of heads in article 398, and forbids alterations without consent in article 397; the Italian Civil Code requires, for improvements, a majority of participants representing at least two thirds of the total value in article 1108; French law likewise sets a qualified majority for acts of administration in article 815-3 while reserving disposal of the property itself for unanimity. In practice a fifty-fifty split means no majority exists at all, which is another argument for uneven shares or for an agreement that names a decision rule.

Can one of us sell just their share to an outsider?

In principle a co-owner may dispose of their own share, which is a rather alarming principle when the asset is your home. All three systems soften it with a pre-emption mechanism giving the other co-owners the chance to buy the share on the same terms — Spain, for example, gives co-owners a statutory right to take back a share sold to a stranger under article 1522 of its Civil Code. Pre-emption only helps if you can find the money at short notice, so treat it as a warning system rather than a protection, and put a first-refusal clause with a realistic timetable into your co-ownership agreement.

Would a property company solve this?

It moves the problem rather than removing it, and it moves it somewhere with better tools. Holding the property through a company replaces undivided co-ownership with shares in a company, and the company's articles can then set decision rules, transfer restrictions and exit terms that co-ownership law does not offer by default. The price is real: incorporation and running costs, annual formalities, and a different tax treatment that can be better or considerably worse depending on what you do with the property — letting it furnished, for example, can push a French property company into corporation tax automatically. It is a structure worth costing properly, not a default.