Indiana

Cohabitation agreements in Indiana: rights you have to write yourself Cohabitation agreements in Indiana: rights you have to write yourself

Cohabitation agreements in Indiana: rights you have to write yourself

Indiana abolished common-law marriage by statute in 1958. However long you've shared a home, money, and a life in Indiana, the law grants unmarried partners none of marriage's machinery — no equitable division of the one-pot estate, no maintenance eligibility, no automatic inheritance, no default authority in a medical crisis. When an unmarried Indiana couple separates, title controls, contracts control, and the rest is litigation over implied promises.

Here's the twist that makes Indiana more interesting than most no-common-law states: Indiana courts have shown willingness to grant relief between former cohabitants on contract and equitable theories — implied contract, unjust enrichment — where one partner conferred real value and walking away with nothing would be inequitable. Helpful doctrine. Terrible plan. Those cases are expensive, uncertain, and built entirely on evidence of what two people "understood." A written cohabitation agreement replaces years of that litigation with a few pages of certainty.

What Indiana's defaults actually do

The house goes with the deed — the partner who paid half the mortgage for a decade without title holds claims, not rights. Accounts follow the name on them. Neither partner owes the other support after separation, no matter the sacrifice history. And at death, an unmarried partner inherits nothing by default — Indiana's intestacy statutes route everything to blood relatives, and the surviving partner may not even control the funeral.

Children are the exception: parentage, custody, parenting time, and child support in Indiana don't depend on marriage. Those rights and duties exist once parentage is established — a separate track entirely.

What an Indiana cohabitation agreement should cover

The home — ownership percentages, contribution treatment (gift, loan, or equity — decide now), buyout and sale mechanics on separation, and timelines.
The money — what's joint, what's separate, how ongoing expenses split, and who owes what if it ends.
Career and contribution imbalances — if one partner steps back from earning for the household or the other's business, only the agreement can compensate that. Indiana law will not.
Business interests — where one partner works in or contributes to the other's company, define whether that creates equity, wages, or nothing. Unwritten, this is a lawsuit.
Exit mechanics — an unwinding process with deadlines, so separation is administration instead of war.

Pair it with the estate documents Indiana's defaults make essential — wills, powers of attorney, health care representatives, beneficiary designations. See estate planning.

Write the rules before you need them

Brown Carrington drafts Indiana cohabitation agreements with litigation-grade precision — because we've seen what the alternative costs.

Straight answers.

Are cohabitation agreements enforceable in Indiana?

Yes — Indiana enforces contracts between unmarried partners, and Indiana's cohabitant-relief case law makes the written version all the more sensible. Clear, written, signed wins.

Does Indiana recognize common-law marriages from other states?

Marriages validly created elsewhere — including common-law marriages from states that permit them — are generally recognized. Proving one existed is its own fight.

We're engaged. Cohabitation agreement or prenup?

Both, sequenced: the cohabitation agreement governs now and a prenup takes over at the wedding — especially valuable given Indiana's one-pot rule.

Does this apply to non-romantic co-owners — siblings, friends buying property?

Identically. The legal vacuum and the solution don't care about romance; co-ownership agreements do the same work.