🏡 Tool

Moving Back Home Agreement

An adult child moving back in almost never goes wrong in the first month. It goes wrong in month seven, over something nobody thought worth mentioning at the start — a partner who is now there five nights a week, a contribution that quietly stopped, a stay with no end date that everyone assumed had one. This works out what the contribution should be, puts the awkward questions on the table while everyone still feels generous, and prints a page both sides can point at later. Everything stays on this device: no account, no login, nothing sent anywhere.

👥 The arrangement

Names go on the printed page. Everything else here is used to work out the contribution — none of it leaves this device.

Whose home

Who is moving in

Move-in date

Target move-out date

Why, in one line — this is the thing everyone forgets by month seven

💷 What the contribution should be

Three ways of arriving at a number. Look at all three before picking one — the argument is much easier when the basis was chosen before anyone saw the figure.

Household running costs a monthMortgage or rent, utilities, council tax, insurance, food, broadband.

People in the house after the move

Their monthly take-home pay

Flat amount, if you just pick one

Share of their incomeWritten as a percentage.

Currency symbol

A flat amount— An equal share of running costs— A percentage of their income—

Of that, held aside as a move-out fundMoney given back when they leave. This is the part that turns a stay into an exit.

What moving out will costDeposit, first month, van, the things nobody budgets for.

Check-ins before an average is shownOne bad week is not a trend.

📋 The things nobody mentions until it is too late

Go through these while everyone still feels generous. Mark each one honestly — “discussed” is not the same as “agreed”, and the difference is where month seven comes from.

🗓 How it is actually going

Log a short check-in each month — both sides, not just whoever is annoyed. The point is to notice a slide early, while it is still a conversation rather than a row.

📈 Where this is heading

Two questions, both worth asking out loud: is the fund actually going to cover the move, and is the arrangement holding up.

Set a move-in and target date to see the fund projection.

Not legal, tax or financial advice, and not a tenancy agreement. This is a household understanding between family members, written down so both sides remember the same conversation. Taking regular payments for accommodation can affect tax, means-tested benefits, home insurance and — in some places — create occupancy rights nobody intended. Amounts and rules that are perfectly normal in one country are not in another. If real money is changing hands or the stay is likely to be long, check the position locally before anyone signs.

Why month seven, and not month one

The opening weeks run on goodwill. Everyone is on best behaviour, the reason for the move is fresh and sympathetic, and nobody wants to be the person who raises money on the first evening. That goodwill is real, and it is also a limited resource that gets spent without anyone tracking the balance.

What runs it down is not conflict. It is accumulation — a series of small things that each felt too petty to mention, right up until the point where mentioning any one of them means mentioning all of them at once. Writing the awkward items down at the start is not pessimism about the arrangement. It is the thing that lets the goodwill last, because nothing has to be raised for the first time in a bad mood.

The contribution is about the shape, not the amount

Families get stuck on the figure when the more important decision is what the money is doing. A contribution that vanishes into household costs makes staying cheap and leaving expensive, which is precisely backwards if the point of the move was to save for something. A contribution where a substantial share is held aside and returned on the way out does the opposite: every month of staying visibly funds the exit.

That framing also changes how it feels to ask. Requesting money for the privilege of a childhood bedroom is an awkward conversation. Setting up an arrangement where part of it is banked toward the deposit is a different conversation entirely, and the same number lands completely differently.

A date, and what happens if the date passes

Open-ended stays are the ones that curdle. Not because anyone is behaving badly, but because with no date there is no moment at which anything gets reconsidered, and drift is much harder to talk about than a deadline is. A target date does not need to be enforceable to work — it needs to exist, so there is a natural point to sit down and either extend it deliberately or act on it.

Worth writing down alongside it: what "not working" would actually look like. It is far easier to define while nothing is wrong, and it means the harder conversation, if it ever comes, starts from something both people already agreed rather than from an accusation.

The parts most families skip

Two questions get avoided almost universally, and both cause disproportionate trouble. The first is a partner staying over — how often, and at what point a guest has effectively become a third resident with no say in the arrangement. The second is privacy in both directions: whether a bedroom door gets knocked on, whether post gets opened, whether the arrangement is described to other people and how.

Neither is comfortable to raise. Both are considerably less comfortable at month seven, in the middle of an argument that is ostensibly about the dishwasher.

Frequently asked questions

Should an adult child pay rent to their parents?

Some contribution is usually healthier than none, even a small one, because it keeps the arrangement in the category of an agreement rather than a rescue. What that contribution should be depends entirely on why they moved back. Where the goal is to clear debt or save a deposit, many families set a modest household contribution and hold a second, larger amount aside in a fund the adult child gets back when they move out — so the money is building the exit rather than disappearing.

Why write it down when it is family?

Because family is exactly the situation where nobody says the awkward part out loud, and eight months later two people have completely different memories of what was agreed. A written page is not a contract anyone intends to enforce — it is a record of a conversation that both sides can point at instead of arguing from memory. The act of writing it also surfaces the things nobody thought to mention: guests, partners staying over, what happens if a payment is late.

Is this a legal tenancy agreement?

No, and it is not written to be one. It is a household understanding between family members. Taking money for accommodation can have tax, benefit, insurance or tenancy-law consequences depending on where you live and the amounts involved, and in some places regular payments can create legal rights nobody intended to create. If real sums are changing hands, check with a local advisor before you sign anything.