A live-in agreement in India is a written contract between two adults who cohabit, recording their understanding on rent, expenses, property, personal articles, day-to-day arrangements, exit notice, and dispute resolution. It does not waive the protections the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 confers on a woman in a relationship in the nature of marriage - no private agreement can - but it records what is for the two of you to decide, which is more than the statute does. Partlee’s panel drafts live-in agreements as an eight-clause document. This piece walks through each clause and what the law will not let you contract out of.
Is a live-in relationship legal in India?
Yes. The Supreme Court has held repeatedly that cohabitation between consenting adults is lawful and that the Constitution’s privacy guarantees protect adult choice in this domain. The leading judgments - S. Khushboo v. Kanniammal (2010), D. Velusamy v. D. Patchaiammal (2010), Indra Sarma v. V.K.V. Sarma (2013) - together establish that live-in relationships are protected, that the PWDV Act extends to relationships in the nature of marriage, and that children born of such relationships are not illegitimate for the purposes of inheritance.
Cohabitation is lawful. The infrastructure around it - landlords, building societies, family - is independently variable, and a separate piece on the live-in and the landlord walks through that ground.
What are the eight clauses in a Partlee live-in agreement?
- The parties. Full legal names, current addresses, dates of birth, the date cohabitation began, the shared address. The clause anchors everything that follows.
- Financial contribution. Rent, utilities, groceries, household-staff payments, internet, recurring subscriptions. The split (equal, proportional to income, or otherwise), the cycle (monthly, weekly), and the bank account through which it flows. Many disputes between live-in partners are really disputes about money that nobody named.
- Property. Separate property each partner brings into the relationship. Joint property accumulated during cohabitation. The treatment if the relationship ends. Indian law gives no presumption of joint ownership for live-in partners; the agreement does the recording the statute does not. A clean schedule of separate property at the start of cohabitation is, six years later, invaluable.
- Personal articles. Gifts received from each partner’s family. Streedhan-type items where the woman has brought articles into the shared home (the legal framing differs from marriage; the practical risk is identical). Listed, photographed, valued.
- Day-to-day arrangements. Work-from-home expectations, household help and how they are paid, family visits, holiday cycles. Not legally enforceable; included because writing it down surfaces the conversation. The conversation, not the clause, is the value.
- Exit notice. The agreed period of notice if either party wishes to leave the shared home. Treatment of the lease, rent obligations, the deposit. The clause is the live-in equivalent of a §13B MoU - it is the document that prevents an acrimonious exit when the friendly version is no longer available.
- Dispute resolution. Mediation first, before any court action. Named institution. Jurisdiction. Choice of law (where relevant for cross-border or NRI-adjacent couples).
- What this agreement does not waive. An honest clause. The PWDV Act protection that flows from a relationship in the nature of marriage cannot be contracted out of. The agreement records what it can record; the statute does the rest.
What does the PWDV Act not let you waive?
The Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 applies to relationships in the nature of marriage by virtue of §2(f). The Supreme Court confirmed in D. Velusamy (2010) and Indra Sarma (2013) that the protections extend to qualifying live-in arrangements. The full doctrinal walkthrough is at PWDV and the live-in partner. The short version: no private agreement, however carefully drafted, can defeat the woman’s right to a protection order, a residence order, monetary relief, a custody order, or compensation under the Act. A well-drafted live-in agreement says so on the page.
The agreement records what is for the two of you to decide. The statute records what is not.
Why do couples sign live-in agreements?
Almost never because they distrust each other. Almost always because the conversation is easier to have once, in writing, than in fragments. A separate piece on why couples in a live-in put it on paper walks through what writing changes about the conversation. The short version: it slows the conversation down, makes the implicit explicit, and gives the agreement a witness in the form of itself.
What does Partlee do?
The live-in agreement track on the Partlee India platform is a structured intake, an empanelled advocate review, a draft circulated to both partners for comment, and a final signed copy lodged in the Partlee vault for both partners to access. Couples who later choose to formalise the relationship find that the live-in agreement folds neatly into a prenup at the marriage stage; couples who part find that the exit notice clause was the most important paragraph in the document, even if it took the least time to draft.