Protecting your deposit if you split up

5 min read · June 2026

Your deposit is probably the single biggest sum of money you'll ever hand over. For most first-time buyers, it represents years of saving. So it's worth spending an afternoon — and a few hundred pounds on legal advice — making sure it's protected before you complete.

The uncomfortable truth: without the right documents in place, your deposit could be treated as a joint asset even if you contributed far more of it than your partner.

What the law actually says

England and Wales don't have a concept of "common law marriage." If you're not married or in a civil partnership, you have no automatic financial rights to each other's assets — including property. Your legal position as a co-owner depends entirely on how you hold the property, and what's documented at the time of purchase.

If there's a dispute, the courts use the Trusts of Land and Appointment of Trustees Act 1996 (TOLATA) to determine who owns what share. The court looks at what you both intended when you bought — which is very hard to prove without written evidence.

Tenants in common — and why it matters for deposits

If you buy as tenants in common (rather than joint tenants), you each own a defined share of the property. Those shares can be unequal — 60/40, 70/30, or whatever reflects your actual financial contributions.

This is the structure that protects an unequal deposit contribution. If you put in £40,000 and your partner puts in £10,000, tenants in common allows your solicitor to register the ownership in a way that reflects that — so if you sell or separate, you're not automatically splitting proceeds 50/50.

The Declaration of Trust: the document you need

Tenants in common tells the Land Registry you have separate shares — but it doesn't automatically record what those shares are, or what happens in various scenarios. That's what a Declaration of Trust (also called a Deed of Trust) does.

A properly drawn-up Declaration of Trust records:

• Each person's percentage share in the property
• How the deposit contributions are acknowledged (and whether a larger deposit earns a larger share)
• How ongoing mortgage payments affect ownership over time
• What happens if one person stops paying their share
• The process if one person wants to sell and the other doesn't

Cost: typically £200–£600 depending on complexity. Your conveyancing solicitor can draw this up at the time of purchase. It's one of the most cost-effective pieces of legal protection you'll ever buy.

What to document even without legal documents

If you're already in the process and can't get a Declaration of Trust drawn up in time, at minimum keep:

• Bank statements showing the deposit came from your account
• Any written agreement between you (email is admissible)
• A clear record of who contributed what, and when

This won't replace a proper legal document, but it's evidence the court can use if there's ever a dispute about intention.

What about gifts from parents?

If one or both sets of parents have gifted money towards the deposit, document whether it's a gift or a loan — and to whom. A parent gifting money to their child, which then goes into a joint purchase, may expect it to remain their child's asset on separation. Whether that's enforceable depends on the documentation.

A family solicitor or your conveyancer can advise on how to structure this. Don't assume it's obvious — courts have seen cases where undocumented parental gifts were treated as joint assets.