Northern Ireland: A Cohabitant's Claim on the House

If your partner died in Northern Ireland, you were not married, and the house was in his sole name, the hardest part of the answer comes first. Nothing passes to you automatically. Not a share of the house, not the right to stay in it, not the money in his account. The law here does not recognise your relationship as giving you any entitlement to his estate, however long you lived together and whoever paid the mortgage each month.

People are often told there is such a thing as a common law wife or husband. There is not, and there never has been, in any part of the United Kingdom. Northern Ireland goes further than most people expect: it has its own succession legislation, separate from England and Wales and separate again from Scotland, and it has not adopted the reform that gave long-term cohabiting partners a route of their own to claim against an estate.

What you do have is narrower and slower, but it is real. There may be a claim to make in court. There may be a share of the house you already own without your name being on the deeds. Both are worth pursuing, and both run on deadlines that begin without anyone telling you.

The short answer: nothing comes to you automatically

When someone dies without a will in Northern Ireland, their estate is divided under the Administration of Estates Act (Northern Ireland) 1955. That statute sets out a fixed order of who takes what, and the categories are spouse, civil partner, children, then parents, brothers and sisters, and outwards through the blood relatives. There is no discretion in it and no category that fits a partner you were not married to.

If he left a will that did not mention you, the outcome is the same in practice. The estate goes where the will sends it. Being the person who shared his bed, his bills and his post box for twenty years does not override the document.

So on the day after the death, the legal position is this. The house belongs to his estate, and the personal representatives — the executors under a will, or the administrators appointed if there is none — hold it for whoever inherits under the will or the 1955 Act. Your presence in the house is not, on its own, a legal right to be there.

That is a brutal thing to read and it is worth saying plainly, because the alternative is finding out from a solicitor's letter in week six. The rest of this page is about what can be done from that starting point.

Northern Ireland has its own succession law

This matters more than almost anyone expects, and it is the reason general UK advice is unreliable here.

In England and Wales, the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975 was amended in 1995 to add a specific category for people who had lived with the deceased as husband, wife or civil partner for the whole of the two years before the death. That change created a route for a cohabitant to apply to court without having to prove they were financially dependent. It is the route described in our guide to the two-year cohabitation claim in England and Wales.

Northern Ireland has the equivalent legislation — the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) (Northern Ireland) Order 1979 — but it was not amended in the same way. A surviving cohabitant here is generally left claiming under the older, harder category: a person who was being maintained, wholly or partly, by the deceased immediately before the death.

Scotland is different again, and arguably more generous in one respect: it created a standalone cohabitant claim, though with a deadline so short that many people miss it. We set that out in Scotland's six-month cohabitant claim on the home. Three jurisdictions, three answers, one island. If a website tells you what "UK law" says about cohabiting partners and inheritance, it is not describing Northern Ireland.

Who inherits instead of you

Where there is no will, the order under the 1955 Act runs broadly like this. A surviving spouse or civil partner takes a fixed sum and a share of the rest, with the balance going to children. If there is no spouse and no children, the estate passes to parents, then to brothers and sisters, then further out. Nephews, nieces and cousins can inherit a house that a surviving partner has lived in for decades.

The figures attached to a spouse's fixed share change over time and differ from those used in England and Wales, so check the current position rather than assuming a number you have read elsewhere applies here. The principle is what matters for you: every rung on that ladder is occupied by someone who is not you.

There is one more complication worth naming early. If he was still legally married to someone else — separated for years, divorce never finalised — that spouse remains his spouse for succession purposes until a decree absolute. Separation is not divorce, and the intestacy rules do not care how long ago the relationship ended.

The claim a cohabitant can make in Northern Ireland

Under the 1979 Order, certain people can apply to the court for reasonable financial provision out of the estate. The categories include a spouse or civil partner, a former spouse who has not remarried, children, someone treated as a child of the family, and — the one that usually applies to a surviving partner — any person who immediately before the death was being maintained, wholly or partly, by the deceased.

That last category is the door, and it is narrower than it sounds. Maintenance means he was making a substantial contribution towards your reasonable needs, otherwise than for full valuable consideration. In practice, a court looks at the flow of money and support between you. If he paid the mortgage and the bills while you ran the household and raised children, you have something to argue. If you each paid your own way from separate accounts and split everything down the middle, the argument is much harder, however committed the relationship was.

What the court can order includes periodical payments, a lump sum, or the transfer or settlement of property — which is how a claim can end with a right to remain in the home. The standard is maintenance, not a share of the estate as of right. A cohabitant is not asking for what a widow would receive. They are asking for enough.

The deadline is the part that catches people. An application must generally be made within six months of the date on which representation is first taken out — that is, from the grant of probate or letters of administration, not from the death. Because you may not be told when the grant is issued, a solicitor can lodge a search at the Probate and Matrimonial Office so that you find out promptly. Six months sounds like plenty. It is not, once you have found a solicitor, gathered evidence and tried negotiating first.

You may already own part of the house

This is the point most often missed, and for many people it is worth more than the family provision claim.

The deeds record the legal owner. They do not always record who owns the value. If you put money into the purchase, paid for an extension, met the mortgage for years, or acted on a shared understanding that the house was as much yours as his, you may hold a beneficial interest in the property through a resulting or constructive trust. That is a property right. It exists whether or not you were married, and it is not a request for the court's sympathy — it is an assertion that part of the house was always yours.

Proving it is evidential work. Bank statements showing transfers. The conveyancing file. Text messages and emails about what you both intended. Receipts for building work. Anything contemporaneous beats anything remembered, because the only other person who knew what was agreed has died and cannot confirm it.

Two practical warnings. First, this claim runs on a different and generally longer timetable than the 1979 Order claim, but do not rely on that — pursue both together. Second, if the personal representatives try to sell the property, register your interest so that a purchaser cannot take it free of your claim. A solicitor will know the correct step at the Land Registry of Northern Ireland or the Registry of Deeds depending on how the title is held.

If your name was never on the deeds and you are reading this before anything has happened, the fix is straightforward and takes weeks rather than years. We have written it up in terminal diagnosis, not married, house in my name.

The mortgage does not wait for any of this

Court claims move at the pace of courts. Mortgages move monthly.

If the loan was in his sole name, you are not a borrower and the lender cannot pursue you for it. That is the good news and it is thinner than it sounds, because the flip side is that you have no contractual standing either. The lender does not have to accept your payments, does not have to tell you anything about the account, and does not have to keep the arrangement running while a claim is argued. The debt is the estate's, and the lender's ultimate remedy is the property.

Tell the lender in writing who you are and that you are living in the property. Ask whether it will accept payments on the account while the estate is administered. Many will, informally, because an occupied and maintained house is worth more to them than an empty one. Get the answer in writing, and keep a record of every payment you make — those payments are evidence in any later claim, and may be recoverable.

The same logic applies to a rented home, where succession rights depend on the tenancy type rather than the relationship, and to part-owned homes. If the property was social housing, see whether an unmarried partner can succeed to a council tenancy. If it was part rent, part buy, see shared ownership when an unmarried partner dies.

Death before pension age is uncommon in any single year but not rare across a working life, which is why so many households meet this problem with no plan in place at all. NISRA publishes the Registrar General's annual figures for deaths registered in Northern Ireland, broken down by age and cause, and they are the right reference if you want the actual numbers rather than an impression of them.

Source: Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency, Registrar General Annual Report — deaths tables, published under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

What to do in the first month

In rough order of urgency.

• See a Northern Ireland solicitor, not a general adviser. The 1979 Order and the 1955 Act are local statutes and the deadlines are unforgiving. Do this in the first fortnight, not after the funeral fog lifts.
• Do not move out. Occupation is not ownership, but leaving weakens your practical position considerably and is very hard to reverse.
• Gather the paper before anyone tidies it. Bank statements, mortgage statements, the conveyancing file, receipts for work on the house, anything showing what you each contributed and what you both intended.
• Find out whether there is a will, and who the personal representatives are. Ask directly. If you are stonewalled, a solicitor can search for the grant.
• Check for cover you do not know about. A mortgage life policy, an employer's death in service scheme, a pension death benefit. Pension and death in service lump sums are usually paid at the trustees' discretion, which means a cohabiting partner can receive them even where the intestacy rules give them nothing — but only if the trustees know you exist. Write to the scheme.
• Get free help alongside the legal advice. nidirect sets out the local probate process, and Citizens Advice can help with benefits and debt while everything else is unresolved.

How couples fix this before it happens

Everything above is the expensive, uncertain version of a problem that is cheap and certain to solve in advance. Three things do almost all of the work.

A will. It is the only document that reliably directs an estate to an unmarried partner in Northern Ireland. Without one, the 1955 Act decides, and it will not choose you.

The deeds. If you are both contributing, both names should be on the title, held as joint tenants if you intend the survivor to take the whole property automatically. Joint tenancy passes outside the will and outside the grant, which is exactly what a surviving partner needs — although if you are also joint borrowers, be clear that the survivor then owes the whole mortgage rather than half of it.

Cover written for the debt. A life policy sized against the mortgage, held in trust or in joint names as appropriate, turns this entire article into a phone call and a cheque. It is the only one of the three that produces money rather than rights, and money is what a lender responds to. Whether an insurer offers cover, and on what terms, always depends on health and underwriting — but if you want to know what it would take, you can get life insurance quotes priced against your actual balance and term.

An employer's scheme is worth checking at the same time, and worth checking honestly: a salary multiple often falls well short of a mortgage taken out at today's prices, as we show in four times salary against a real mortgage balance. The rest of this topic sits in our guide to mortgages and property when someone dies.

Frequently asked questions

Does an unmarried partner inherit anything in Northern Ireland?

Not under the intestacy rules, which recognise spouses, civil partners and blood relatives only. There is no common law marriage in Northern Ireland, so a surviving cohabitant inherits nothing automatically, however long the relationship lasted and whoever paid towards the home. A will is the only reliable way to change that.

Can a cohabitant claim on the house in Northern Ireland?

A claim may be possible under the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) (Northern Ireland) Order 1979, generally where you were being maintained by your partner. The court can order a lump sum or the transfer of property. Time limits are short and run from the grant, so take advice from a local solicitor immediately rather than waiting for the estate to be settled.

What if the house was in his sole name but I paid towards it?

You may have a beneficial interest even without being on the deeds, based on your contributions and a shared intention about ownership. Proving it means gathering bank records, the conveyancing file and evidence of what was agreed, then arguing it against the people who have inherited. It is a separate route from a family provision claim, and both can be pursued together.