A good legal agreement can lower the risk of a broken co-purchasing arrangement. By discussing future potential scenarios and their legal ramifications in detail, your group can limit future ambiguity and develop shared understandings that can foster group security.
We recommend including the following in your group’s Legal Agreement:
Rights and responsibilities of each member of your purchasing group
Financial obligations
Future scenarios
Over the next three sections, we will be covering the three important features to include in your legal agreement. Starting now with Rights and Responsibilities!
Rights And Responsibilities
It can be useful to include all or aspects of your Group Agreement as part of your Legal Agreement. As a group, you can decide which of these commitments from your Group Agreement you would like to make legally binding. This might include (but isn’t limited to) your commitments with respect to:
Mortgage Payment Schedule
Funds Required for Maintenance
Chore Schedules / Shared Efforts
Use of Space
Noise and Privacy
It may also suit your group to include remedies for particular scenarios or disputes in your Legal Agreement. If your group is comfortable creating contractual obligations for certain aspects of your household functioning, then you could include these in your Legal Agreement as well.
What, if any, commitments stated in your Group Agreement do you want include in your legal agreement?
| Commitment | Included in Legal Agreement: Yes / No |
Details: What must happen? | Remedy in case of default by member |
|---|---|---|---|
| Payment Schedules | |||
| Chore Schedules | |||
| Shared Labour / Resources | |||
| Use of Space / Privacy / Noise | |||
| Maintenance of other Shared assets e.g. car | |||
| Pets | |||
| Visitors | |||
| Decision-making power, or communication commitments i.e. attendance at house meetings | |||
| Other: | |||
| Other: | |||
| Other: |
You may want to designate someone who is the first to call in case of emergencies, or a hierarchy. What is the hierarchy of emergency contacts?
| 1. Emergency contact 1 |
|---|
| 2. Emergency contact 2 |
| 3.Emergency contact 3 |
The next section will cover Financial Obligations!
How Do You Create Your Legal Agreement?
Click on the sections below to learn more.
What are all the Steps to Becoming a Co-owner?
Click on the links below for all the blog articles related to each step.
“Review these key areas when deciding as a group what will be included in your Legal Agreement. This will save you an enormous amount of your lawyer’s time. This preparation is the difference between billings for 3 hours vs. 30 hours! ”
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