My boyfriend of 20 years died and left me his $1.5 million home. Now his kids are pushing back because we never legally married. Who’s right?

Say, for example, that Walter and Lisa had been living together for 20 years but never tied the knot. Walter has now passed on, leaving his $1.5 million home to Lisa. Unfortunately, Walter’s two kids are unhappy and pushing back, saying Lisa has no right to the home.

Lisa isn’t sure whether the kids are right to be mad, or whether they have any legal recourse to take the house.

The answer to that isn’t a simple yes or no, though. Since the couple wasn’t married, lawyers say it will come down to what the estate plan says and whether it’s valid.

The kids can’t do anything if the gift was valid

Of course, with Lisa and Walter living together in the home for decades, it may be very hard for the kids to make the case that he wouldn’t have wanted her to have their shared home.

“A couple who lived together and shared a home for 20 years provides a very understandable explanation for why one partner would want the other to inherit the property,” Cleary said. “While that doesn’t necessarily preclude a challenge, it provides substantial context supporting the conclusion that leaving the home to the surviving partner was an intentional and considered decision.”

Unfortunately for Walter’s kids, if Walter structured the gift properly, Lisa has every right to keep the house, and there’s likely nothing they can do about it.

“The fact the couple was never married doesn’t invalidate the inheritance,” Patrick Simasko, an elder law attorney at Simasko Law, told Moneywise. “A person can generally leave their assets to whomever they choose. A long-term relationship is clearly something that supports the decision to award that person the home.”

And that’s not all.

“If the couple owned the property as joint tenants with rights of survivorship, ownership would pass automatically to the surviving partner upon death without going through probate,” Thomas Cleary, founding partner at Cohen Cleary, told Moneywise.

However, if it was left to Lisa via a will or trust, it would pass through probate or trust administration — but should still ultimately go to Lisa, provided the document is valid.

“If the will or trust left a specific bequest of real estate, and the document was properly executed without duress, undue influence, fraud or a forgery, the kids are out of luck,” Barry E. Janay, owner of The Law Office of Barry E. Janay, P.C., told Moneywise. “It’s not a question of the marriage, but it is a question of what was in the will or trust.”

If there’s a problem with the plan, Lisa may be out of luck

Walter’s kids have few options if the home passed to Lisa because she was already a co-owner and had survivorship rights. If the house is passing through probate or a trust, it’s possible they could fight it, but they’d need a good reason.

“To actually challenge the passing of the house, they will need evidence of undue influence, fraud or lack of mental capacity,” Simasko explained. “The cost of trying to take it back may deter the children. Attorneys would only take a case on contingency if they had very strong evidence of the undue influence or mental incompetency. Otherwise, it would be an hourly rate, which can end up costing a substantial amount of money.”

Janay also agreed that they could challenge the will, and that might be their only avenue to stop Lisa from keeping the home.