Relevant section from the link in my previous post:
If you’ve been living in a home your ex owns in just their name and there's no other agreement or understanding in place, you will have no automatic right to stay if your ex asks you to leave. However he or she should give you reasonable notice.
If you’ve been living in a home your ex owns, you don’t have an automatic right to a share in the value of it known as the ‘equity’. Nor can you ask for a share to be transferred as you would do if you were married or in a civil partnership.
You’re not entitled to any equity from the property – unless you can show that:
you both intended for you to own a share and,
because of that agreement you did something to your own detriment (such as gave up work or a job opportunity or a council tenancy) or,
you contributed to the purchase price, the mortgage payments, or major building work to the property.
Non-financial contributions, such as doing building work yourself to improve the property, can also count in some circumstances. (If you have children together then you may be able to apply for a 'settlement' of property order for the benefit of the children – see Children above.)
How the law treats any money you contributed to the home you lived in but don’t own depends on:
what you and your ex agreed or understood between you, or
how the court looks at what you said, or did, to work out how you both understood the situation.
For example, was it a loan – to be repaid at an agreed date with or without interest as agreed? Was it a gift? Or was it a contribution which gives you a legal right called a beneficial interest? Again, if you made a living together agreement, now’s the time to find it and remind yourselves what you agreed to – hopefully you will have covered this issue.
The easiest way to prove you have a beneficial interest is if you have something in writing or a formal trust deed with your partner setting out who should get what when the home is sold. Without this kind of evidence proving what your intentions were, the law looks for other evidence about what understanding (if any) existed between the two of you. This involves considering questions such as:
What did you agree about the beneficial ownership of the property?
Were you promised a share of the property?
Did that promise or understanding mean that you acted to your detriment in some way, for instance gave up your job or left your own home in order to live with your ex?
Who contributed to the purchase of the property?
Who paid the mortgage?
Who carried out improvements to the property?
If you can prove that you have a beneficial interest (and this is often very difficult to do), this may allow you to:
to get the right to live in the home,
prevent the sale of the home for a limited period of time,
pay the mortgage to stop the home from being repossessed or,
get a share from the proceeds of sale if the home is sold.
If you are not married or in a civil partnership and don’t own the home you shared with your ex either jointly or in just your name, this is the only way to establish long-term rights to the home and a share of the proceeds of sale. The law about this is complex and you will need legal advice about whether and how to take action. This type of case isn’t treated as a family case - it is dealt with by the normal civil court. The court will order you to pay your ex’s legal costs if you lose. You may hear lawyers call these cases ‘TOLATA cases’ after the law that governs them - the Trusts of Land and Appointment of Trustees Act 1996.