Financial Agreements: Cohabitation and De Facto Relationships.

You can choose to deal with all of your financial interest now or you may choose to deal with a single asset like a family farm, a business or an inheritance.

Couples often use a Financial Agreement to protect assets accumulated before the relationship for existing children.

Financial Cohabitation Agreements allows you to decide how you will :-

• Deal with assets and liabilities that each partner accumulated separately before the relationship;
• Handle and manage jointly acquired assets;
• Divide individual and jointly owned property if the relationship breaks down.

Financial agreements can comfort and reassure people living in or entering into de facto relationships. They are recognised and enforceable under Part VIIIAB of the Family Law Act and can save you time, money and a lot of heartaches.

How to talk to your partner about a cohabitation agreement

Talking about legal and financial issues can be confronting. But  communicating openly and honestly with each other about difficult topics will give you a solid foundation for getting through tough times.

That being said, it’s important to approach the conversation with some sensitivity. We recommend that you:

1. Plan ahead and choose a time carefully;
2. Keep it simple and don’t expect to cover everything at once;
3. Have an answer for why a financial agreement is important to you; and
4. Stay calm, fair and respectful

How to arrange a cohabitation agreement

Traditionally, you would engage a lawyer to draft the agreement for you. This involves several meetings to determine what you want the agreement to achieve, and as lawyers charge by the hour, it is easy to see how the costs escalate quite rapidly.

Alternatively, you can start with a financial agreement (cohabitation) template kit and do more of the work yourself, saving you considerable time and money.

But remember, you will still need legal advice before you sign to ensure your agreement is binding.

What are the benefits of using a Kit vs a Lawyer?

When you visit a lawyer for the first time, you can expect a meeting to flesh out your needs. From that meeting, you’ll be required to provide certain information, for example:

• Who are the parties to the agreement? You will provide full names and dates of birth.
• When did you start living together?
• Are there any children of the relationship (names and dates of birth)?
• Do you hold any controlling interest in a company trust or SMSF?
• List each party’s current assets and liabilities.

Once that information has been provided, a document will be prepared (generally from a template the firm has used previously), and another meeting will be scheduled to review the draft agreement.

You may need to provide additional info, and there may be several emails back and forth.

All the while, the meter is running at the hourly rate. The more meetings and emails, the higher the cost.

Once a document has been prepared, you will provide a copy to your partner, who must then seek his/her own legal advice.

It’s a time-consuming and costly process.

All that to-ing and fro-ing can be avoided if you use a template kit.

You will still need to provide all that information, but instead of paying a lawyer to enter the data into their template, you and your partner can enter the information straight into a template yourselves.

It’s easy to see how this can save you a bundle in legal fees!

How It Works – and What It Costs

A simple, two-stage process-you prepare the agreement together, then obtain the required independent legal advice to make it binding.

Fixed Pricing – No Nasty Surprises

* Fixed pricing applies to 95% of customers.
If your situation involves complex structures (e.g. multiple companies, family trusts), we’ll assess your draft and let you know before proceeding if any extra fees would apply.

The easy to use de facto cohabitation agreement kit is only $147

This de facto agreement kit has been professionally drafted to comply with section 90UB of the Family law Act or section 205ZO of the Family Court Act (Western Australian) and allows you to complete a defacto financial agreement with a minimum of fuss. It includes;

• The defacto Agreement template – written in plain English
• A Comprehensive User’s Guide which answers your questions
• Sample agreement – so you know what the completed agreement should look like
• Sample clauses – help you to tailor the document to your own situation – just cut and paste!
• A Bonus Will kit because you often need to update your Will when entering a new relationship.
• Access to the Exclusive Members area which takes you through the process step-by-step
• Complimentary Financial Agreement Assessment –we check your draft agreement to determine whether if is suitable for our Legal Review Service. This is how we save you thousands of dollars in legal fees.
• Access to fixed price Legal Advice (Legal Review Service $3,250 covers both parties in most cases) so you can get your agreement certified without spending a fortune.

Why do we need Legal Advice?

The legal Advice acts a safety net, and ensures that both parties understand the effect that the agreement has on their legal rights. It is mandated by  Section 90UJ of the Family Law Act, which states that each party to the agreement must receive independent legal advice before the agreement has any legal force.

To fulfil this requirement, RP Emery provide an Agreement Review and Legal Certification Service .

Sample Pages of a Cohabitation Agreement

We’ve shown the agreement for all states except W.A., heterosexual couple.

The grey boxes indicate form fields where you enter your personal information.

Which Cohabitation Agreement do you need?

Agreement Type	All states EXCEPT WA	Western Australia
Already Living Together	Buy Financial Agreement 90UC Kit	Buy Financial Agreement WA 205ZO Kit
Planning to Live Together	Buy Financial Agreement 90UB Kit	Buy Financial Agreement WA 205ZN Kit

Satisfaction Guaranteed – Our Promise to You

If for any reason you are not completely satisfied with your purchase or our service, please phone our office on 1800 608 088 within seven (7) days of purchase and we will rectify the situation, issue a refund, or offer a credit towards future purchases.