I'm no legal expert. I make it a point to pick up the phone and call my lawyer if and when ever I'm thinking about any kind of new arrangement with another person or company. By new, of course, I mean anything out of the ordinary. Anything at all.

A story I heard this weekend illustrates just how loosely you should define "anything new" when it comes to arrangements.

The daughter of a gentleman for whom I did some work many years ago is about to find herself homeless. She'd been living with her former boyfriend since they graduated college. I say former because while they'd dated in college, the relationship had ended amicably. Both of them have dated and continue to date other people.

So they weren't romantic partners but they have been domestic partners of sorts. They live together in a house the daughter bought. It's her house, so far as the bank is concerned. Her name is on the mortgage. She makes the payments.

Legally speaking, her house mate contends that he is entitled to some portion of the house - that he owns half of it. And now that he's moving out, he wants to cash out.

Sound preposterous? On the surface it probably does. Realize though, that neither he nor she had any sort of agreement to formalize their arrangement. She has records to show she took out the loan and made mortgage payments, but that's about as far as the record keeping goes. Suppose, for instance, he claims that while she made the house payments, he paid for utilities. Or that he did a substantial part of the maintenance and upkeep. Maybe he went into his own pocket to make an improvement or two.

I don't know all the details. I can't even begin to guess how this situation will come out. I can see how she may end up having to sell her house in order to let this man walk away with something to show for the time, effort and money he's invested.

As I said above, I'm no legal expert; but I fear for the daughter in this situation. There are probably laws and precedents to cover situations like this, but no matter how it turns out this situation will end up costing her at least the time and money it takes to work through the legal system. At most it could cost her the house.

A simple written document, signed by both her and her house mate, describing their arrangement from a legal point of view might have cost them a couple of hundred dollars 6 years ago when they graduated college together. That was probably a lot of money to them at the time and no doubt didn't seem even remotely necessary at the time. Ah, if only life offered do-overs in situations like this.