On 5th June 2026, the Government slipped out what could be the biggest shake-up of family law in England and Wales in over 50 years. If you’re married, in a civil partnership, living with someone, or even just thinking of moving in with a partner, the proposals in this consultation could completely change the way you think about the financial side of your relationship – and what happens when it breaks up.

This article is here to give you the lowdown on what’s being proposed, what it means in real life, and what you need to be doing right now.

Key Takeaways:

The government has just published a consultation on financial arrangements called “A Fairer End to Relationships” – the biggest proposed reform of family law in England and Wales since the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973.

The proposals are all about three main areas: changing the way people get financial support when a marriage or civil partnership ends through a ‘codification-plus’ model, introducing a new law to help couples who live together but aren’t married or in a civil partnership if they split up, and sorting out the rules for when someone’s partner dies without a Will.

The consultation is open until August 2026, and the law hasn’t changed yet – but if you’re thinking about divorce, splitting up, or moving in with someone, you need to get a handle on how these changes could affect future settlements. Proposed changes to the way the law works out what people need in a separation could make things more predictable and formulaic, but it might mean there’s less room for judges to make their own decisions in some cases.

It’s still crucial to speak to a family lawyer or solicitor – both to navigate the current rules and to plan ahead in case things change.

1. What’s the ‘A Fairer End to Relationships’ Consultation All About?

On 5th June 2026, the Ministry of Justice published a consultation paper called “A Fairer End to Relationships: Reforming Financial Provision When Relationships Break Down.” It’s all about England and Wales, and it’s part of the whole framework of UK family law – rather than creating a completely new system.

The consultation is broken down into three main parts:

• Changing the way financial support works when couples divorce or split up, including a proposed ‘codification-plus’ model that would spell out the key rules that judges use in their decisions.
• Giving unmarried couples rights over their property and finances when they split up, which would be a big step forward for people in this situation.
• Overhauling the rules for what happens when someone dies without a Will, so cohabiting partners don’t get left with nothing.

The government says its goal is to make it fairer when relationships break up – with clearer rules, fewer disputes, and more help for people who need it most, especially women and people who care for kids.

Just to be clear: this is a consultation, not a Bill. There isn’t a new law yet. Any new legislation will probably come later this Parliament, after the government has looked at all the responses they get until August 2026.

2. Why Now? The Changing Face of Families

In England and Wales, the way people live together has changed completely. The ONS says that by 2025, nearly 11% of adults aged 18 and over were living with a partner without being married or in a civil partnership – up from 9.8% in 2015. Cohabiting couples are the fastest-growing family type in the UK, and married or civil-partnered couples now make up about half of all adults.

The last big shake-up of financial remedies law was the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973. A lot of the way things work now comes from judges’ decisions in big cases like White v White (2000) and Miller v McFarlane (2006). But the Law Commission said in 2024 that the system is still unclear and unpredictable, and people can’t reliably know what they’ll get in a separation.

And then there’s the myth of ‘common law marriage’ – loads of people (almost 47%) still think that living together automatically gives you the same rights as being married, but in England and Wales, this just isn’t true. Millions of people are left with no protection.

The government says these proposals are part of a bigger plan to modernise family law to reflect how people live today – including more blended families, non-marital partnerships, and the realities of modern life.

3. How the Consultation Process Works (June–August 2026)

A government consultation is basically an invitation for the public, and anyone with a stake, to comment on proposed policy changes before they become law. It follows the Cabinet Office’s consultation principles and is designed to get all sorts of views and evidence.

The “A Fairer End to Relationships” consultation opened on 5 June 2026 and the consultation period is running until August 2026. An Easy Read version was added on 23 June to help more people take part.Those who are being invited to put in their thoughts include

• Judges, magistrates and people who work for the court
• Family lawyers, people who work as mediators, and people who study these things
• Charities and other groups that offer support
• Members of the public who’ve gone through a break-up
• Local councils and other people who are interested in this

You can send your thoughts online or by email, following the instructions in the official consultation document which is on gov.uk. What’s going to happen next is that the government will go through all the comments in late 2026, write a report summarising what people said, and then potentially come up with a draft Bill or White Paper with all the details of the changes they want to make.

4 Financial Remedy on Divorce – How We Get Money and Houses Sorted

If you aren’t really up to speed on family law, “financial remedies” might sound like some pretty abstract stuff. But in reality, it’s about working out how to divide up the cash and property when a marriage ends in divorce or civil partnership breakdown. And the tools we use are things like sorting out who gets what property, making someone pay a lump sum, spousal maintenance (or “periodical payments” as some people call it), pension splitting, and housing orders to sort out where kids live.

All of this comes down to the key legal bits and bobs from the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 – specifically section 25 which outlines what a judge should bear in mind. And we’ve had a lot of leading court decisions built on top of that bit of law from the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal.

The “needs” principle is all about making sure both people can afford their living costs – housing, income and what they owe to others. That is especially important where the kids live mainly with one parent, because the court will always prioritise their needs.

The “sharing” principle is all about treating a marriage or civil partnership like a partnership of equals – so that the property and assets that get built up together are divided up fairly, often 50/50, unless there’s a good reason to do it differently. That all started with the landmark case in White v White which said that it should be the starting point.

We also have a limited “compensation” principle – which is about making up for the fact that one person has had to give up a career to look after the kids, and has been really disadvantaged long term. In practice, most cases boil down to needs and sharing rather than pure compensation, and the idea is that we might not even codify compensation as a separate rule.

5 What is this “codification-plus” Business

One of the big ideas is to work out a clearer framework for working out financial remedies in a law, rather than leaving it all up to the judge’s discretion. This is the “codification-plus” model, which came out of the Law Commissions report last year.

“Codification-plus” does not mean just copying what is already in the court decisions into law. It’s about refining it all, making it simpler, and possibly even adding some extra guidance or some rough idea of what the rules are likely to be in different cases. For example, working out what to do with long marriages where there are kids would look different from working out what to do in short marriages with no kids.

The government says the aim is to reduce uncertainty, give people and their lawyers clearer expectations about what is going to happen, and make it easier for people to sort things out without having to go to court.

Key bits of this include

• An overall aim for fairer outcomes, which will anchor the sharing and needs principles
• A clearer definition of what counts as matrimonial property, building on the Supreme Court’s decision in Standish v Standish last year
• A bit more structured guidance on what people’s housing needs are likely to be
• A stronger emphasis on people getting on and sort their own affairs out within a certain time period
• The introduction of qualifying nuptial agreements – which are binding agreements that people can make before getting married, about what will happen to their property and cash if they ever divorce.

The sharing principle might also get tweaked, with clearer rules about what is your property and what is your spouse’s – for example, if one of you brought in cash or property from elsewhere.

6 How Might Divorce Settlements Change in Reality?

Let’s take some examples to make this all a bit more tangible.

Example 1: A 15 year marriage with 2 kids at school. Under the current rules, it all depends on the judge and the arguments from the lawyers. One judge might order the person with the kids to keep the house; another judge might order a sale and split the cash. Under a codified system, there would be clearer rules for what happens most of the time – maybe a rule that says the person with the kids gets to stay in the house until the youngest child finishes school, and then you split the other property more or less 50/50. The result is that there would be more certainty, but perhaps less room for the judge to do their thing and make the rules fit the individual case.

Example 2: A 3 year childless marriage. Under codification-plus, there might be less chance of one person being ordered to pay the other a lot of cash over a long time. Equal sharing might still apply to the cash and property that you built up together, but your own cash and property that you brought in would be kept separate.For higher-net-worth divorce cases where one partner has come into a significant amount of money through inheritance or hard work, the distinction between “marital” and “non-marital” property is going to become a lot more important – and could protect some assets. Pension division is also likely to become a much bigger deal – courts may actually have to take into account how much pension was built up during the marriage, which could change the way settlements are valued.

Long-term spousal maintenance is looking like it could get a lot more clearly defined, and there’s likely to be a push towards clean breaks where it’s realistic to do so – but still protecting the partner who’s stayed at home to look after the kids.

The big thing to remember though: until any new laws actually get passed, the rules we have now are the ones you need to be working with. If you’re getting divorced in 2026, you should base your decisions on how things are now, even if you’re thinking ahead to how any new reforms might affect your long-term financial situation.

7. The proposed framework for cohabitants – what it means for when cohabiting relationships break down

Here’s a reality that can catch a lot of people off guard: outside of a very few property and trust claims (like under the Trusts of Land and Appointment of Trustees Act 1996), cohabiting couples don’t have an automatic right to maintenance or property when their relationship ends – no matter how long they’ve been together. Cohabitants can face a lot of financial difficulties after a split, and the law as it stands right now doesn’t give them much protection.

The government is proposing a new framework to give cohabitants a bit more protection. Any new framework would only apply to eligible cohabitants – and that would mean meeting certain criteria such as:

• Living together for a minimum period – the idea being that people who have been together for at least three years might qualify
• Being in a relationship with a child together
• Being in a long-term, committed relationship

The consultation suggests giving courts the power to make financial orders between cohabitants if that’s necessary – that might include things like a one-off payment, property adjustment, or limited maintenance in some cases.

This isn’t the same as treating cohabitants in exactly the same way as married couples. The government is thinking about a more modest safety net that just tries to make sure things are fair and people don’t end up in a really tough spot financially – rather than making sure everyone gets an equal share. Think of it as a basic level of protection, rather than the maximum amount you can get.

Any new framework is likely to give couples the option to opt out or contract out – so if a couple doesn’t want the new rules to apply to them, they can make that choice by writing it down and having a family solicitor or divorce solicitor sign it off.

8. Intestacy and inheritance rights for cohabiting partners

Right now, under the Administration of Estates Act 1925, unmarried partners don’t automatically inherit anything if their partner dies without a will in England and Wales. That’s true no matter how long the couple have been together or how much they’ve committed to each other. If a partner dies without a will, a cohabiting partner can only make a claim under the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975 – which is slow, expensive, and not very reliable.

The consultation is thinking about making it easier for cohabiting partners to inherit on intestacy – by looking at things like how long the couple have been together, whether they shared a home, and whether they had any kids together. The government seems to be leaning towards treating qualifying cohabitants in the same way as married couples for inheritance purposes – in terms of how much they inherit, and where they fit in the order of priority.

The idea is to reflect the fact that a lot of long-term cohabiting couples end up feeling like a family, even if they’ve never got married or entered a civil partnership. They might share a home, finances, and responsibilities – but not have any formal agreement in place.

There is some concern though – from organisations like STEP – that giving cohabitants full intestacy parity could lead to disputes between a surviving partner and any children from a previous relationship.

What’s the takeaway here? Even with possible reforms on the way, the best way to make sure a partner is protected is still to make a will. That’s something you should definitely think about now, rather than waiting to see what the new law is.

9. What does this mean if you’re thinking about divorce right now?

If you’re even now thinking about starting divorce or dissolution proceedings, here’s the key thing to keep in mind: the consultation doesn’t change the law yet. If you start divorce proceedings in 2026, your financial settlement will still be decided under the existing rules.

With 103,816 divorces and dissolutions in England and Wales in 2023, and around 50,000 financial remedy applications in 2025, all decided under the current rules, this is pretty important stuff. You should definitely talk to a family solicitor or divorce lawyer about the consultation – not because it’s going to change your case straight away, but because it might influence strategy on long-term maintenance, pension division, or how quickly a clean-break order can be sorted out. Being clear with your solicitor about what you want and what you can realistically expect will help a lot.

Being upfront about the decision to split can also help prevent false hope – for you, and for your ex. While the new rules might make outcomes a bit more straightforward, which can be a good thing for some people, it might also reduce the scope to argue for really unusual settlements in really exceptional circumstances.For those still in the early stages of deciding their next move, there’s interest in keeping tabs on the progress of reforms over the next year or so – especially where assets worth a lot, complicated business interests or big pension pots are involved.

10. What If You Are Cohabiting Or Planning on Moving in Together?

If you’re part of the millions of couples in England and Wales who live together but aren’t married, these proposals could change your situation quite a bit once new laws are passed. Until then, the old rules still apply – and unfortunately, there’s still no such thing as “common law marriage”.

That means what you do now really matters:

• Make a cohabitation agreement with the help of a good family solicitor – this sorts out the financial stuff, like who owns what, how bills get paid, and what happens if you split up.
• Have a look at how your home is owned. Property should be registered the way you and your partner intended – for example, as joint owners or owners who each have a share. And it’s worth doing this with a written statement of trust to back you up.
• Update or sort out your Wills. Cohabitants don’t have the same inheritance rights as married people do, so if the worst happens, a Will is the best way to make sure your partner is looked after.
• Check on who you’ve nominated as beneficiaries on your pensions, life insurance and any death-in-service benefits.

Keep records of any big financial contributions you’ve made to the property or any joint ventures you’ve started – this will come in handy later if you need to prove a point.

Having good records of everything is your safest bet while the laws are still changing.

11. How the Proposals Aim to Deliver a More Fair Settlement – and the Debates Around Them

The idea behind these proposals is pretty straightforward: they want to level the playing field a bit when relationships come to an end – especially when one partner has been out of the workforce to look after the kids or elderly relatives. The consultation acknowledges that it’s usually the person who was at home who gets hurt financially when things go wrong.

Those who are in favour of reform reckon a more structured system would make getting divorced cheaper, lead to more out-of-court settlements and give people a better idea of what’s going to happen if they talk to a divorce solicitor or mediator. When you’re splitting up, it’s all about being clear and honest with each other – and a fairer system would help both sides do that with a bit more dignity.

Having clear boundaries is crucial for healing after a breakup – and codifying the rules could provide those boundaries in a financial sense. Listening to each other’s feelings is a courtesy – and reform advocates would say that a less uncertain process gives you more emotional space to get on with things.

But there are some concerns out there too. STEP has responded to the consultation saying they’re worried about giving cohabitants the same rights as spouses when it comes to inheritance. Practitioners are worried that rigid formulas won’t suit every case – especially the more unusual ones – and there’s a genuine debate about how long you should have to be living with someone before you get rights – three years might be too short or too long, and what about people who are on/off with each other all the time?

And then there’s the question of giving each other space to process your feelings during the breakup conversation – a principle that should apply just as much to the legal process. Reform needs to find a balance between making things fair and respecting people’s autonomy and the different ways they manage their finances in modern families.

12. The Role of Family Law Advice During a Period of Change

Specialist advice is especially valuable in 2026, because the law is still current but you know changes are on the way – and that creates a degree of uncertainty that a qualified expert can really help with.

A good family lawyer or family solicitor typically handles divorce and separation cases, interpreting the existing financial remedies law, giving advice on likely outcomes, and helping clients get a handle on how future reforms might affect their long-term plans. They sort out all the necessary paperwork for divorce proceedings, negotiate agreements for things like child contact and residency, and advise on pre-nuptial agreements to protect financial interests. In more complicated situations, family lawyers may represent clients in cases involving children.

Experienced family lawyers can help couples use alternative dispute resolution – like mediation, collaborative law or arbitration – to reach agreements that would still make sense even if the rules change. A good law firm draws on their knowledge of both current case law and where the law is heading, so they can advise clients properly.

Early advice can help prevent a whole heap of costly mistakes: informal property arrangements between cohabiting partners that get stuck and can’t be easily undone, or maintenance agreements that don’t take into account that things are going to change. When it comes to breakups – whether that’s in a private face to face setting or in a legal capacity – talking things through with a solicitor is always going to be worth a lot more than just making things up as you go along.

For people submitting consultation responses on their own or on behalf of an organisation, chatting to family law practitioners on the frontline can give you a much-needed dose of real world experience to inform your opinions.

13. Practical Steps You Can Take Now

Here’s a quick checklist of actions you can take in 2026, no matter what your relationship status:

If you’re married or in a civil partnership and things aren’t working out:

• Start gathering all the financial info you can get your hands on: income, savings, property, pensions, and any debts
• Get some early advice on financial arrangements and how they’ll play out in the event of a split
• Talk to your solicitor about whether the timing of your case might be affected by any upcoming changes
• If you’re getting married or about to get married, consider whether a qualifying nuptial agreement might be worth looking into

If you’re cohabiting:

• Take a good hard look at how your home is owned and think about updating the title deed or drawing up a declaration of trust
• Get a family solicitor to sort out a cohabitation agreement for you
• Make sure your Will is up to date – this is non-negotiable until the government sorts out the whole intestacy reform business
• Check that your life insurance and pension nomination forms are sorted

If you’ve got strong feelings about what a “fairer end” to your relationship should look like:

• Respond to the consultation by August 2026
• Whether you’re a campaigner for better rights for cohabiting partners, or someone who’s been through a tough break up and thinks the law needs to change, your voice matters

New laws can take a while to come into effect. Making some sensible, well-documented financial plans now – with the help of a family solicitor – is likely to be a lot more valuable in the long run than waiting for the new rules to come in.

14. FAQs: The 2026 “A Fairer End to Relationships” Consultation

Here are some answers to some of the most common questions that haven’t been covered yet.

Will the new “fairer end” rules apply to divorces that are already sorted?

In most cases, new family law rules are unlikely to reopen final financial orders that have already been made and implemented, except in very rare circumstances where there’s been serious non-disclosure or outright fraud. If the government introduces new legislation following the consultation, it’ll usually include some transitional provisions that specify exactly which cases the new law will apply to and from what date. If your divorce is already done and dusted and both parties are happy with the outcome, the chances are it won’t be reopened.

Could I put off getting a divorce in the hope of getting a better deal under the new financial regime?

It’s a bit of a gamble to delay things in the hope of more favourable rules down the line, because there’s no guarantee what the new regime will look like or when it’ll kick in. Timing should be guided by more practical things like your personal safety, your housing situation, the needs of your children and what your solicitor recommends – not speculative ideas about reforms that may change significantly during the legislative process. In any given year, the political timetable can shift in March or July.

Will cohabiting partners automatically get 50% of the house under the proposals?

No. The consultation doesn’t propose giving all cohabiting partners an automatic 50% share of the property. What they’re exploring is a more targeted safety net for eligible cohabitants, focused on their needs rather than a blanket sharing principle. Any future scheme is likely to be a bit more modest than the full sharing principle that applies on divorce, and outcomes will still depend on individual circumstances and contributions. A good sign of a good reform is one that prevents hardship without creating unfair windfalls.

Do I still need a cohabitation agreement or pre-nup if the law changes?

Absolutely. Agreements will remain valuable because they let couples set their own rules rather than relying on whatever statutory default the government comes up with in the end. Think of cohabitation and pre-nuptial agreements like seatbelts – they’re a precaution that can reduce uncertainty and disputes, regardless of how generous or limited the legal safety net becomes. A good agreement, drawn up with some independent legal advice, will represent your wishes a lot more precisely than any one-size-fits-all statute.

How can I keep up to date with what happens after August 2026?

Keep an eye on the official gov.uk updates for the government’s response to the consultation and any announcements about draft Bills or legislative timetables. Check in with a family lawyer or family solicitor, or follow reputable family law commentary from firms and organisations that really know their stuff. The landscape will evolve, and staying informed is the best way to make sure you don’t get caught out by changes that could affect your future.