But We Never Got Married.” How Colombia’s De Facto Unions Catch Foreigners Off Guard

The story below is a composite, built from the kinds of situations that come up again and again. The names are invented. The law is real.

Mark moved to Medellín from Canada in 2020, working remotely for a software company back home. Within a year he had met Daniela, and not long after she moved into his rented apartment in Laureles. They talked about marriage now and then but never got around to it. Mark liked to joke that he had been married once already and that was enough.

In 2022, Mark bought an apartment in Envigado. The deed was in his name alone, paid for from his salary. Daniela chose the furniture, managed the renovation and covered the building fees most months. In 2023 Mark also bought a car, again in his own name.

In early 2025 the relationship ended. Mark assumed that, since they were never married, the apartment and the car were simply his. Daniela’s lawyer saw it differently.

What Mark didn’t know

Colombian law recognizes the unión marital de hecho, a de facto marital union. It exists when two people, of the same sex or opposite sexes, share a permanent and exclusive life together as a couple without marrying. There is no ceremony, no registration and no form to sign. The relationship itself creates it.

More importantly for Mark, once that union has lasted at least two years, the law presumes a shared property regime between the partners, called the sociedad patrimonial. As Gerencie’s explanation of the rules sets out, it works much like the property regime in a marriage. Assets acquired during the union through the couple’s work and mutual support are shared, along with debts taken on in that period. What each person owned before the union, and what they received by inheritance or gift, stays theirs.

By the time they separated, Mark and Daniela had lived together for about four years, and both the apartment and the car were bought during that time. Whose name was on the deed did not settle the question.

How the union gets proven

Under Law 979 of 2005, a de facto union and its property regime can be formally declared in three ways. The couple can sign a public deed before a notary, they can record it in a conciliation agreement, or, if they disagree, a family judge can declare it.

Mark disputed that they had ever been a real couple in the legal sense. So Daniela went to court with leases showing both names, photos from family events, WhatsApp messages calling each other husband and wife, a health insurance enrollment listing her as his partner, and testimony from neighbors and friends. For a judge, that is a fairly typical evidence file, and in cases like this one it is usually enough.

The deadline that matters most

Here is the part that surprises both sides. Claims to dissolve and divide the shared property of a de facto union must generally be brought within one year of the couple separating. Miss that window and the property claim is likely lost, even if the union itself is clear.

Daniela filed within months. Had she waited until 2027, Mark’s position would have been much stronger. For foreigners on either side of a breakup, that one-year clock is easily the most important date in the whole process.

It is not only about breakups

The same union carries inheritance consequences. In ruling C-238 of 2012, the Constitutional Court confirmed that a surviving permanent partner, including a same-sex partner, has the same intestate inheritance rights as a surviving spouse. A foreigner who dies in Colombia without a will may leave a partner with a legal claim to part of the estate, alongside or ahead of relatives back home who assumed they would inherit.

Pension and health insurance benefits can follow the union too. Colombian institutions regularly treat permanent partners as family members for those purposes.

What Mark could have done differently

None of this means foreigners should avoid relationships in Colombia, or that de facto unions are a trap. They exist to protect partners, often the one with fewer assets in their name, and they usually do that job well. But there are choices to make, and most people never make them.

Couples can sign an agreement setting out how property will be treated, ideally before the union reaches two years or before major purchases. They can formally declare the union and its start date, removing arguments later. And anyone separating should take advice quickly, because ending a relationship that the law treats like a marriage raises many of the same property questions as a divorce, with a much shorter deadline attached.

Mark eventually settled. The apartment was sold and the proceeds were split after accounting for what he had put in before the union began. It cost him far more in time and stress than a two-page agreement would have cost in 2021.

This article is general information, not legal advice. Whether a de facto union exists, and what property it covers, depends heavily on the facts of each relationship.