Washington doesn’t have common law marriage, and most of what’s online about unmarried couples and property describes other states’ law. This guide is for the person who lived with a partner for years, built a life and probably some assets together, and now hears that none of it counts because there was never a wedding. It explains what a committed intimate relationship is under Washington law, how a court decides whether you were in one, what the court can and can’t divide when it ends, and the deadline that runs from the day the relationship is over.
A committed intimate relationship in Washington is a judge-made doctrine that lets a court divide the property an unmarried couple acquired while they lived together as a couple. It’s not a marriage and it doesn’t come with the things a marriage does: no spousal maintenance, no attorney fee shifting, no temporary support order while the case is pending. What it does is stop one partner from walking away with everything the two of you built because the house or the account happened to be in their name. You have three years from the end of the relationship to file. After that, the claim is gone.
My partner says I have no rights because we never married. Is that true?
No. It’s the most common thing we hear at the first meeting, and it’s wrong.
Part of it is true. Washington has never recognized common law marriage. You can live together for 20 years, share a last name, and raise kids, and you’re still not married. The Washington Supreme Court said so directly in Peffley-Warner v. Bowen, 113 Wn.2d 243, 249 (1989). So if your partner means you won’t get maintenance, or you won’t inherit as a spouse, they’re correct.
The rest of it isn’t. Since 1984, Washington courts have divided property between unmarried partners when the relationship looked enough like a marriage. The Supreme Court started with In re Marriage of Lindsey, 101 Wn.2d 299 (1984), and set the modern rules in Connell v. Francisco, 127 Wn.2d 339 (1995). The idea is simple. If two people pooled their money and effort for years and one of them holds title to everything, letting that person keep it all would be unjust. So the court can divide what the two of you acquired during the relationship, in a way that’s fair, the same way it would divide community property in a divorce.
That’s the doctrine. The rest of this guide is about how it works in practice, which is where most people run into trouble.
What is a committed intimate relationship in Washington?
The Supreme Court’s definition is “a stable, marital-like relationship where both parties cohabit with knowledge that a lawful marriage between them does not exist.” Connell, 127 Wn.2d at 346. Older cases called it a “meretricious relationship.” The court retired that word in 2007 because of its history, and now uses “committed intimate relationship.” Olver v. Fowler, 161 Wn.2d 655, 657 n.1 (2007). You’ll see it shortened to CIR, and you’ll still find the old term in cases from the 1990s and early 2000s. They mean the same thing.
What the definition means in practice
There’s no statute. Chapter 26.09 RCW governs divorce cases. Court decisions govern a CIR case, starting with Lindsey and Connell. There are no pattern forms, no statutory factors, and no checklist the legislature wrote. That’s why the same question gets different answers from different lawyers.
It’s equitable. The purpose is to prevent unjust enrichment, meaning one partner keeping what both partners built. The court isn’t enforcing a contract or a promise. It’s deciding what’s fair given what the two of you actually did with your money and your lives. That gives the judge a lot of discretion.
“Marital-like” is an analogy, not a test. The court has been clear that it’s “a mere analogy.” Courts decide equitable claims on the specific facts, and the outcome doesn’t depend on the gender or sexual orientation of the parties. Vasquez v. Hawthorne, 145 Wn.2d 103, 107 (2001). The Court of Appeals applied the doctrine to a same-sex couple in Gormley v. Robertson, 120 Wn. App. 31 (2004), eight years before Washington’s marriage equality law took effect.
What does a court look at to decide whether we were in one?
Five factors, and none of them is a requirement by itself. From Connell, 127 Wn.2d at 346: (1) continuous cohabitation, (2) the duration of the relationship, (3) the purpose of the relationship, (4) pooling of resources and services for joint projects, and (5) the intent of the parties. The list isn’t exclusive. The Supreme Court added in In re Marriage of Pennington, 142 Wn.2d 592, 602, 605 (2000), that the factors are “neither exclusive nor hypertechnical” and are meant to reach all relevant evidence, and that “One Connell factor is not more important than another.”
There’s no two or three year minimum
You may have read that Washington requires two to three years of living together before a CIR exists. It doesn’t. Duration is one factor. It’s a significant one, and a short relationship makes the claim harder. But there’s no minimum period anywhere in the cases. In Lindsey itself, the couple lived together for just under two years before they married, and the Supreme Court held that period counted. Connell, 127 Wn.2d at 346 (describing Lindsey). A six-year cohabitation “favors” a CIR, as the Court of Appeals put it in Muridan v. Redl, 3 Wn. App. 2d 44 (2018), but the court didn’t say anything shorter fails. There’s no bright line in Washington case law, whatever you’ve read elsewhere.
Living together matters, and the courts are split on how much
Cohabitation is the one factor that comes closest to a requirement. Connell‘s definition says both parties “cohabit.” In In re Marriage of Byerley, 183 Wn. App. 677, 689 (2014), Division II of the Court of Appeals held that a CIR “cannot in any event commence prior to the date the parties begin living together,” calling cohabitation “a sine qua non” (a thing you can’t do without). Division I, which hears appeals from Snohomish and Island Counties, followed this rule in an unpublished 2025 decision, Jorgensen v. Sears, where overnight stays while one partner still lived with a spouse didn’t count as cohabitation.
But Division III disagreed in an unpublished 2024 decision, In re Marriage of Thew and Jacques, reasoning that Connell never held separate residences rule out a CIR and that treating cohabitation as a hard condition conflicts with the rule that no one factor controls. Unpublished opinions don’t bind any court, so Byerley is still the rule you should plan around, especially here. Just know that the question of when a CIR starts, and whether it can start before the move-in date, isn’t as settled as it looked five years ago. It matters because the start date decides how much property is on the table.
The other factors in plain terms
Purpose. Were you together to build a life, or to share rent? Roommates who split utilities aren’t in a CIR. A couple who bought a house, planned a future, and presented themselves as a family probably is. In Muridan, a domestic partnership affidavit the couple signed for health insurance counted as evidence of purpose and intent, even though the motive was insurance. They’d sworn they were partners.
Pooling. Joint accounts help, but they aren’t required. What matters is whether your money and effort went into shared projects: a down payment, the mortgage, a business, a remodel, raising kids. In re Long and Fregeau, 158 Wn. App. 919 (2010). One partner paying the mortgage while the other paid everything else is pooling.
Intent. Both of you have to have intended a committed relationship. This is where a partner who’s still married to someone else becomes a problem. In Pennington, one man stayed married for the first five years and refused to marry after his divorce; the court found no mutual intent. 142 Wn.2d at 604. Staying married isn’t automatically fatal, though. In Long, the Court of Appeals held it’s “a fact to consider, but it is not determinative.” Our post on being in a CIR when your partner is still married goes deeper on this issue.
Sex and cheating don’t decide it
The word “intimate” wasn’t meant to make sexual intimacy “the litmus test,” and infidelity doesn’t end a CIR by itself. Muridan, 3 Wn. App. 2d at 61-62. What mattered in Muridan was what the couple did after the affair came out: they stayed together and kept living as a family. A 2024 unpublished Division I decision, In re Harris and Brimlow, upheld a CIR after 16 years with separate bedrooms and almost no sexual relationship.
How does a committed intimate relationship case actually work?
The court answers three questions in order. Did a CIR exist? If so, which property is “community-like,” meaning it would have been community property if you’d been married? And how should that property be divided fairly? Pennington, 142 Wn.2d at 602; In re Committed Intimate Relationship of Amburgey, 8 Wn. App. 2d 779 (2019). You have to win the first question to get to the second. Most of the litigation happens on the first and second.
A judge decides, not a jury
Whether a CIR existed is a mixed question of law and fact. Pennington, 142 Wn.2d at 602-03. The judge decides what happened and then decides whether those facts add up to a CIR. Because the claim is equitable, a judge decides it, not a jury.
What the case looks like
In practice, it’s a civil lawsuit in superior court. You file a complaint (or a petition; the caption varies by county and by lawyer), serve your former partner, exchange documents and testimony in discovery, and try the case to a judge if it doesn’t settle. Expect your former partner to contest both the start date and the end date. Expect your partner to say you were roommates, or that they always kept their money separate, or that they told you it was over years ago. The evidence that answers those arguments is mostly paper: leases, deeds, loan applications, insurance enrollments, tax returns, texts, and the wills or powers of attorney you signed naming each other. Our post on how to prove a committed intimate relationship existed walks through it.
What property can the court divide, and what can’t it touch?
The court can divide community-like property. The law presumes that everything acquired during the relationship belongs to both of you, no matter whose name is on it. Connell, 127 Wn.2d at 351. Wages earned during the relationship, a house bought during the relationship, a retirement account funded during the relationship, a business one of you started while you were together. Your partner can rebut the presumption, for example by tracing the purchase to money one of you had before the relationship.
The court can’t divide separate property. This is the biggest difference from a divorce, and it surprises most clients. In a divorce, the judge can reach both spouses’ separate property to make the overall division fair. In a CIR case, the judge can’t. Property either of you owned before the relationship “should not be before the court for distribution.” Connell, 127 Wn.2d at 349-50. The same goes for anything you received by gift or inheritance. Connell, 127 Wn.2d at 351. The Supreme Court repeated it in Soltero v. Wimer, 159 Wn.2d 428, 434 (2007): “If there is no community-like property, then there is nothing to justly and equitably distribute.” Dividing pre-relationship property is an abuse of discretion. Byerley, 183 Wn. App. at 685.
The house that’s only in one name
If the house was bought during the relationship, the fact that it’s titled in your partner’s name doesn’t decide anything. Each partner has “an undivided interest in the couple’s jointly acquired property, even though it was titled in” one partner’s name. Olver, 161 Wn.2d at 670-71. The question is when it was bought and with what money, not whose name is on the deed.
The house your partner owned before you moved in
This is the hard case. The house itself is separate property and stays with your partner. Your argument is that the community paid the mortgage or improved the property, and you should be reimbursed, or that the increase in value came from your joint efforts. Courts take that argument seriously but demand proof. The law presumes increases in value are separate too, and you carry the burden of showing that community contributions, not the market, caused the increase.
Two recent unpublished Division I decisions show how it goes: one reversed an award because the claiming partner couldn’t tie the number to actual contributions, and the other affirmed giving a partner nothing from the house because she couldn’t show her monthly payments were anything more than rent. In re Marriage of Lomasney and Newby (2024); In re Domestic Partnership of Cartwright and Peters (2026). If this is your situation, the case rises or falls on your records of what you paid and what work you did.
Your unpaid work for your partner’s business
Labor during the relationship is a community-like asset. If you worked in your partner’s business for years for little or no pay, the court can compensate the community for that. Koher v. Morgan, 93 Wn. App. 398, 402 (1998). The measure is usually the value of the labor, not a share of the business itself if the business was separate property. Two 2024 and 2026 unpublished decisions did exactly that, awarding a wage-based amount for uncompensated work rather than a percentage of the business.
Retirement accounts
Contributions made to a 401(k) or pension during the relationship are community-like property and the court can account for them in the division. Getting the money out is the problem. The federal rules for dividing an employer retirement plan by court order (a QDRO) cover spouses, former spouses, children, and dependents. A former partner who was never married to the account holder often doesn’t fit into those categories, and plan administrators will usually reject a QDRO for a CIR case.
One federal appeals decision in 2009 allowed one where the partner qualified as a dependent, but that ruling is narrow and no Washington court has specifically applied it. In practice, the court usually awards the non-account partner other assets to offset the retirement, rather than splitting the account itself. Talk this through before you settle, because a settlement that assumes a QDRO will work can fall apart later. The same is true of Social Security: there’s no benefit on a former partner’s earnings record without a marriage.
Our post on what property gets divided when a CIR ends covers each of these in more detail.
Is there a deadline to file a committed intimate relationship claim?
Yes. Three years from the end of the relationship. In re Kelly, 170 Wn. App. 722, 737 (2012): “A party must sue to establish that the relationship existed within three years of the end of the relationship.” The court applied the three-year statute in RCW 4.16.080(3) and held the claim accrues when the relationship ends. 170 Wn. App. at 734-35.
Two things follow. First, the clock doesn’t wait for you to realize you have a claim. If you moved out in June 2023 and you’re reading this in September 2026, you’re out of time. Second, your former partner will usually dispute the end date, because the same partner who says you were never a couple will also say it ended long before you think it did. And the relationship can end before anyone moves out. The Court of Appeals has held a CIR ends when one partner unequivocally tells the other it’s over, even if they keep sharing the house afterward. In re Parentage of G.W.-F., 170 Wn. App. 631, 648-49 (2012). Write down when it ended and why you say so, and keep the texts and emails that show it. If it’s close, file first and argue later.
Living together before you married
If you lived together and then married, the years before the wedding don’t need a separate CIR lawsuit. In a divorce, the pre-marriage CIR is just a fact the court considers in characterizing property, and you don’t have to plead it in advance. In re Marriage of Neumiller, 183 Wn. App. 914, 922 (2014). Raise it early anyway. A 2024 unpublished decision let a trial court exclude a CIR theory raised on the day of trial.
More on the deadline: Is there a deadline to file after a CIR ends?
What can’t I get in a committed intimate relationship case?
Maintenance and attorney fees
No spousal maintenance. Maintenance (what other states call alimony) comes from RCW 26.09.090, which applies to marriages and registered domestic partnerships. A CIR isn’t either one. The court can divide property. It can’t order your former partner to support you going forward.
No attorney fees under the divorce statute. In a divorce, RCW 26.09.140 lets the court make the spouse with more money pay the other’s fees. That statute doesn’t apply to a CIR case. Western Community Bank v. Helmer, 48 Wn. App. 694, 699 (1987); Foster v. Thilges, 61 Wn. App. 880, 887 (1991); Kelly, 170 Wn. App. at 740-41. Division I reaffirmed it as recently as October 2025 in an unpublished decision, In re Marriage of Coluccio and Khanlarova.
The court can still award fees on other grounds: a written agreement between you, sanctions for frivolous filings under CR 11, the other side’s bad-faith conduct in the litigation, and in a probate-connected case the court’s fee authority under RCW 11.96A.150. And if you have children together, the parentage case is different. RCW 26.26B.060 lets the court award fees in a parentage action, so your lawyer will keep the time spent on the parenting side separate from the time spent on the property side. For the property claim itself, plan on paying your own lawyer.
Temporary orders and forms
No temporary support. This one catches people off guard. In a divorce, the first hearing is temporary orders: who pays what while the case is pending, who stays in the house, and often an order that one spouse pay the other’s fees. That comes from RCW 26.09.060, a divorce statute. It doesn’t apply to a CIR case. There’s no basis for an order that your former partner support you or advance your fees while the case is pending. The case is a civil equity action, and the main event is trial.
The automatic restraint depends on the county
In Snohomish and Island Counties, the court issues its automatic temporary order the day a CIR case is filed, the same way it does in a divorce. SCLSPR 94.04(b); Island County LSPR 94(a), (b). It restrains both of you from transferring, hiding, or borrowing against property except in the usual course of business, for the necessities of life, or by written agreement, and it covers insurance, new debts, and access to records. If there are children, it also bars either parent from moving them. The petitioner has to serve it.
King County’s rule, LFLR 4(h), issues the automatic order only in divorce, legal separation, and invalidity cases, so a CIR case filed in King County starts with no restraint at all. Beyond the automatic order, any injunction (say, to stop a sale that’s already under contract) has to meet the general civil standard under CR 65, which is a harder showing than a divorce court asks for. If you’re worried your partner will sell the house or empty an account, tell your lawyer on day one.
No pattern forms. The Washington courts publish mandatory forms for divorce, parenting plans, and child support. There are none for a CIR case. Your lawyer drafts the pleadings from scratch.
Our post on maintenance and attorney fees when a CIR ends covers what can still support a fee award.
What happens if my partner dies?
The claim survives. It doesn’t matter whether the relationship ended by breakup or by death. Each partner had an undivided interest in the community-like property while the relationship was going on, and “the death of one or both partners does not extinguish that right.” Olver, 161 Wn.2d at 670-71. The estate steps into the deceased partner’s shoes. The Court of Appeals applied that to a one-partner death in In re Estate of Langeland, 195 Wn. App. 74, 85-86 (2016), rejecting the argument that death converted the decedent’s share into separate property beyond the court’s reach.
The newest published decision goes further. In In re Estate of Franks (Wash. Ct. App. Div. II, Feb. 3, 2026), the court held the surviving partner’s one-half interest in community-like property arose when the property was acquired, not when a judge later declared the CIR, so it was never part of the deceased partner’s estate at all. That case involved the estate tax, but the reasoning matters to any survivor whose partner’s family says the house is theirs now.
What a surviving partner doesn’t get
What you don’t get is a spouse’s inheritance. A surviving partner isn’t a “surviving spouse” under the intestacy statute. Peffley-Warner, 113 Wn.2d at 251-53. Your claim is to your half of what you built together, not to your partner’s separate property or to a spouse’s share of the estate. And the procedure is different: you usually bring the claim as a petition in the probate case under the Trust and Estate Dispute Resolution Act, and the estate’s lawyer will raise the three-year deadline if the relationship ended before the death. See My partner died and their family says the house is theirs. What are my rights?
We have kids together. How does this fit with the parenting case?
They’re separate cases with separate rules. The parenting plan and child support come from the parentage statutes, chapter 26.26A and 26.26B RCW, and they exist whether or not a CIR ever did. Unmarried parents have the same parenting rights and child support obligations as married ones. The property claim is a different civil action. In our practice we usually file the two separately and combine them later, and the courts have approved consolidating them.
One trap to know about. In an unpublished 2026 Division III decision, Adams v. Adams, never-married parents filed a “legal separation” petition, which the court had no authority to hear. The temporary parenting plan entered in that mis-captioned case didn’t survive when the case was refiled as a CIR and parenting action, and the Court of Appeals reversed a contempt finding based on it. Get the caption right at the start. Our post on how the property case fits with the parenting case explains how the two run together.
What should I do this week?
Write down the dates. When you started dating, when you moved in together, when you separated, and what happened on each of those days. The start date decides how much property is on the table. The end date starts the three-year clock. Your former partner will contest both, and the partner with the better records usually wins the argument.
Gather the paper. Leases and deeds. Mortgage statements. Two or three years of bank and retirement statements for every account you can find, in either name. Tax returns. Insurance enrollments, employer benefit forms, and anything else where one of you named the other as partner, dependent, or beneficiary. Wills and powers of attorney. Don’t worry about organizing it yet. Get copies before you lose access to the accounts.
Don’t move property, and watch whether your partner does. Until a case is filed, nothing stops either of you from selling or transferring assets. In Snohomish and Island Counties the automatic temporary order takes effect on filing; in King County it doesn’t issue in a CIR case at all. Don’t move money yourself; a judge deciding what’s fair will hold it against you. If your partner starts doing it, tell your lawyer right away.
Calendar three years from the end of the relationship, and treat the earliest plausible end date as the real one.
Common questions
How long do you have to live together in Washington to have a committed intimate relationship? There’s no minimum. Duration is one of five factors a court weighs, along with continuous cohabitation, the purpose of the relationship, pooling of money and effort, and both partners’ intent. The Supreme Court has counted a relationship of just under two years. No factor is required by itself, and no factor outranks the others.
Can I get alimony or spousal support if we lived together but never married? No. Spousal maintenance in Washington comes from the divorce statute and requires a marriage or registered domestic partnership. A committed intimate relationship case can divide the property you acquired together, but the court can’t order ongoing support from one partner to the other.
How long do I have to file a committed intimate relationship claim in Washington? Three years from the date the relationship ended. The Court of Appeals set that deadline in 2012, and it runs from separation, not from when you learned you had a claim. Because the end date is often disputed, document it and file well before the earliest date your former partner could argue.
The posts in this series
Does a CIR exist: What are the Connell factors, and how does a court apply them?, How do you prove a committed intimate relationship existed?, and Can I be in a committed intimate relationship if my partner is still married?
Property, deadlines, and remedies: What property gets divided when a committed intimate relationship ends, and what doesn’t?, Is there a deadline to file after a committed intimate relationship ends?, and Can I get maintenance or attorney fees when a committed intimate relationship ends?
Your situation: My partner died and their family says the house is theirs. What are my rights?, Does Washington recognize common law marriage?, and We have kids together but never married. How does the property case fit with the parenting case?
Related guide: Family Business Divorce in Washington, for valuing a business one of you owns.
Last updated September 2026.
Law Offices of Daniel Ehrlich, Everett. Family law in Snohomish, Island, King, and Skagit Counties. (425) 954-5578.
This article is general information, not legal advice. Every case is different. If you’re separating from a partner you never married and there’s property between you, talk to an attorney.
