Home ownership remains an aspiration for millions of people, although changing demographic trends and economic pressures mean that today’s first-time buyers have different domestic arrangements compared to previous generations. Specifically, fewer couples are getting married, and an increasing number of unmarried partners are purchasing properties together.
This is an interesting phenomenon in its own right, with several root causes and consequences. One knock-on effect that most modern homebuyers overlook is the legal complexity that arises if disagreements about the ownership arrangement occur.
To put it another way, if one person wants to sell and the other wants to stay, being unmarried makes this decision trickier. Couples who have never married cannot get divorced, and so the standard route to dividing assets is closed to them.
Breakups, changes in circumstances, job transitions, family commitments, and any number of other obstacles can still disrupt homeownership for unmarried couples. In this case, partition actions can be the preferred legal tool. As a result, their usage has skyrocketed in recent years.
With so much at stake in any property purchase made by unmarried couples, it’s essential to understand this trend and be aware of the legal options available. To that end, the team at Underwood Law, a firm of California partition lawyers, has compiled an overview of the data behind the growing use of partition actions, the likely path couples must follow if they find themselves in this situation, and why this matters.
Demographic changes and economic issues facing homebuyers today
A look at data on marriage and divorce rates over time tells one story about the state of play for relationships in the U.S., although it’s only a small portion of the wider tale.
The U.S. Census Bureau cites studies showing marriage rates were stable between 2012 and 2022. For every 1,000 women aged 15 and above, 16.7 were married within the previous 12 months in the most recent data set. Ten years earlier, this figure was 16.6, indicating that the trend has barely changed.
Meanwhile, divorce rates actually dropped to 7 per 1,000, down from 10 in 2008. There are differences between states and regions of the country, but the overall trend is clear.
Another Census Bureau study into coupled households between 2017 and 2021 reflects the dominance of married couples in domestic spaces, with opposite-sex wedded partnerships accounting for 86.8% of those surveyed. Couples who are unmarried made up 11.6% of the total.
What’s more telling about the way people live today is that this same report found that younger couples are choosing not to get married in significantly larger numbers than at any point in history. In 1968, 81.5% of adults aged between 24 and 34 lived with a spouse. By 2018, this had dropped to 40.3%. Over the same window of time, unmarried couples living together rose to 14.8%, from a marginal proportion of 0.2% half a century earlier.
But what about home-buying trends among these demographics? At the national level, Census data show that 65% of properties are owner-occupied. Meanwhile, the National Association of Realtors reported that in 2023, unmarried couples made up 9% of homebuyers. In 2024, this fell to 6%, but still represents a 46% uptick in couples who’ve never tied the knot choosing to buy a home compared with 10 years ago.
Many cite the reason behind this shift as being purely economic. Between 2012 and 2025, house prices in the U.S. have increased every quarter, according to the U.S. Federal Housing Finance Agency. Over this same period, median house prices have risen from $221,700 to more than $435,000. Over the same period, the Social Security Administration’s average wage index has increased from $44,321.67 to $69,946.57.
Combined with rising living costs and inflationary pressures, people have less money to spend and a harder time getting onto the property ladder. This means that unmarried couples have a greater incentive to buy a home together, regardless of whether they eventually plan to get married.
The spike in home purchases by unmarried couples was further catalyzed by the pandemic and the rise in remote working arrangements. It made financial and practical sense for people to buy homes with their partners during quarantines, when everyone was confined to their homes. However, while the economic issues surrounding home ownership persist, the return to normalcy post-pandemic has created friction in many households. This is where partition actions come into the equation.
The property trap
Put simply, unmarried couples that have differing ideas about what to do with a property they both own can become paralyzed by this state of affairs. An arrangement that was once amenable to both parties might not suit cohabitees indefinitely.
Breaking free of the property trap this creates is achievable via partition actions. These can lead to the forced sale of a property, with the details determined by a court, if the owners cannot agree on what to do with it. It is typically brought by the owner who wants to sell against the owner who is opposed to this decision.
In the context of unmarried couples that co-own a home, partition actions are a last resort and require the involvement of expert legal counsel. As such, it is recommended that alternatives be explored before taking this type of action.
One recommended option is to have couples draft and commit to a cohabitation agreement that clarifies what will happen to the property if circumstances change. That way, there’s an unambiguous way forward even if a couple splits. Coupled with other provisions, such as a buyout clause that guarantees the party wishing to stay rather than relocate has first refusal on acquiring a co-owned home, the forced sales associated with partition actions need not be the looming threat they initially appear.
The future of forced sales in US real estate
It is likely that the rise in partition actions and forced sales observed in the U.S. property market at present is a symptom of the short-term shift in property purchasing habits triggered by the pandemic. In this case, even if the number of unmarried couples buying homes together continues to rise in the years to come, we may not see the same increase in significant real estate ownership disagreements and the associated legal ramifications.
Of course, with average home prices still climbing each quarter, couples remain incentivized to buy together sooner rather than later. This makes having clear cohabitation agreements in place a sensible step to limit the likelihood of costly and emotionally painful complications later on.
