DEEDS - UNMARRIED COHABITANTS

If you pay $55,000 to renovate and add to a girlfriends home and lived there for 8 years paying half the expenses, does that give rise to any interest, real or equitable, in the property standing in the girlfriends name? No says the SJC. See Collins v. Guggenheim, 417 MA. 615(1994).

The Court said that the incidents of marriage do not attach to an arrangment of cohabitation without benefit of marriage. The court also denied all rights to the value of his contribution.