People who share a house want a document that says so. Florida will enforce some of what that document does during life. It will not let the same document do the work of a will, a deed, a marriage, or a hospital directive. The usual mistake is to treat a cohabitation agreement as a substitute for the rest of the stack.

There is no Florida statute titled "cohabitation agreement," and no 2025 or 2026 law created statewide domestic-partnership inheritance rights. Unmarried partners still do not appear in sections 732.102 and 732.103. Florida still does not recognize a new common-law marriage entered into after January 1, 1968 (section 741.211). A local domestic-partnership card does not put someone on the heir list. Same-sex spouses who are legally married have the same Florida spouse tools as any other married couple. Unmarried partners of any gender have the tools they put in writing, and only those.

What a cohabitation agreement **can** do is allocate things the couple already has the power to contract about while both are alive: who pays which household expenses, how a joint account will be used, whether one person will be reimbursed for a down payment, how furniture and cars bought during the relationship will be divided if the couple separates, and -- if the formalities for land are met -- how equity in a house will be treated between them. Those are contract problems. They need offer, acceptance, and consideration, like any other contract. They also run into the statute of frauds. Section 725.01 bars an action on a contract for the sale of land, or of any uncertain interest in land, or for a lease of more than a year, or on an agreement that is not to be performed within a year, unless the agreement or a memorandum of it is in writing and signed by the party to be charged. An oral promise that "the house is half yours" is the kind of claim that statute is built to stop. A signed writing is the beginning of the analysis, not the end of it.

What the agreement **cannot** do, by itself, is turn the partner into a person the Probate Code already knows.

It cannot make the partner an intestate heir. Who takes in an intestacy is a statutory list. A contract between two living people does not amend sections 732.102 and 732.103.

It cannot create a tenancy by the entireties. Section 689.15 treats estates by the entirety as the marital exception to Florida's no-implied-survivorship rule. Unmarried partners who want survivorship on land need an express joint tenancy with right of survivorship, or some other deed that actually conveys what they intend. A paragraph in a cohabitation agreement that says "we hold the house as entireties" does not make it so.

It cannot create an elective share. Section 732.201 gives the elective share to the surviving spouse of a person who dies domiciled in Florida. Section 732.2065 sets the amount at 30 percent of the elective estate. There is no partner elective share. A cohabitation agreement is not a waiver of a right that does not exist, and it is not a grant of a right the statute withholds.

It cannot authorize hospital decisions. The default proxy list in section 765.401 still runs guardian, spouse, adult children, parent, adult siblings, qualifying relative, then close friend. A contract in a desk drawer is not a designation of a health-care surrogate under section 765.202.

If the couple wants a contract that someone **must** leave property at death -- a promise to make a will, to give a devise, not to revoke a will or a devise, not to make a will, or not to make a devise -- Florida is stricter than ordinary contract law. Section 732.701(1) says that such an agreement is not binding or enforceable unless it is **in writing and signed by the agreeing party in the presence of two attesting witnesses**. A nonresident's agreement that was valid where executed can be valid in Florida even if it lacks those witnesses. Joint wills and mutual wills do not create a presumption of a contract to make a will, or of a contract not to revoke (section 732.701(2)). Two people signing matching wills on the same afternoon have not, without more, locked those wills in place.

A contract to make a will is still not a will. A will has to be executed as section 732.502 requires: signed at the end by the testator (or by another person in the testator's presence and at the testator's direction), with the signing or acknowledgment in the presence of at least two attesting witnesses, who sign in the presence of the testator and of each other. The contract, if it is valid under section 732.701, is a claim against the person who promised -- and, after death, typically a claim in the estate administration. It does not title the house. It does not name a POD beneficiary. It does not appoint a health-care surrogate. It is a lawsuit waiting for a breach, not a substitute for the documents that move property without a fight.

That distinction matters when a couple tries to do everything in one "partnership agreement." The lifetime clauses may be useful. The death clauses may be unenforceable if they were signed without two attesting witnesses. Even a perfectly witnessed section 732.701 contract leaves the survivor suing an estate that may already have passed non-probate assets to someone else. Life insurance, POD accounts, and TOD registrations follow their own designations. Homestead still follows Article X, section 4 and sections 732.401 and 732.4015. The 2026 summary-administration cap still does not create an heir.

The safer description of the work -- not a sales pitch, just the legal stack -- is ordinary and several: a cohabitation agreement for the lifetime allocations the couple actually wants to be able to enforce; a valid Florida will, and, if probate of those assets is to be avoided, a funded revocable trust; beneficiary designations that name the partner; a deed whose survivorship language matches the plan; a durable power of attorney; a health-care surrogate designation and a living will. If the couple later marries, a different set of tools turns on: tenancy by the entireties, homestead elections, elective share, and, if they want, a marital agreement under section 732.702. Marriage is not required for a decent plan. It is the switch that turns on spouse statutes. A cohabitation agreement is not that switch.

This article is general information, not advice about a particular contract, title, or family. The Law Office of Shawn C. Newman, P.A. offers a free consultation in person or by Zoom, including about wills, funded trusts, powers of attorney, advance directives, and cohabitation agreements. Call (954) 563-9160 or visit www.shawnnewman.com. The office is at 710 NE 26th Street, Wilton Manors, Florida 33305, and serves Broward, Palm Beach, and Miami-Dade Counties.