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The difference between sambo and marriage in Sweden

In Sweden, there are several different classifications of relationships, which each give the partners a different legal status and rights. Here's what you need to know about what it means to be a sambo in Sweden.

The difference between sambo and marriage in Sweden
Being sambos might be the first step on the road to marriage, or it might be an alternative. Photo: Janerik Henriksson/TT

The term sambo is used to describe couples in Sweden who live together. It’s a shortened form of the adjective sammanboende (where samman means “together” and boende comes from the verb bo meaning “to live”), and Swedish also has the term särbo to refer to couples who live apart.

Both these words typically suggest a serious and long-term relationship, although they can be used for couples who have been together for months or for decades.

Depending on the couple, a sambo relationship may be a stepping stone on the way to marriage, or a substitute: marriage rates are lower in Sweden than in many other European countries, with many couples choosing to remain sambos throughout their whole lives.

From a purely bureaucratic point of view, marriage makes a lot less difference than in many other countries. There are no tax deductions for married couples, for example, and the process for applying for a partner visa is the same whether you’re married or simply cohabiting partners. In practice, life as a spouse or a sambo is much the same, but marriages are ruled by the Marriage Code (äktenskapsbalk), while sambo relationships are subject to the rules set out in the Cohabitation Act (sambolagen or Act 2003:376).

This means there are some important differences to be aware of.

A marriage is slightly more complicated to enter into than a samboskap. Marriage can be carried out in a religious ceremony or a civil one, as long as the person officiating has a marriage licence. The couple also needs to apply for a marriage certificate and to contact the Swedish Tax Agency (Skatteverket) in advance in order to get the correct documents, as they will confirm there are no reasons not to allow the marriage (such as one partner being underage or already married).

One important aspect is that gender doesn’t matter, whether you’re sambos or a married couple. Since 2009, same-sex couples have been able to enter into marriages and exactly the same rules apply as to different-sex couples.

When it comes to entering into a samboskap, this can happen in several different ways. 

If you are moving to Sweden from another country to live with your partner (whether or not they are Swedish), you will need to register this with Skatteverket when you arrive, even if your primary reason for moving is not to live together – such as if you’re moving for a job. You can do this whether or not you have already lived together.

If you are moving or hoping to move from outside the EU, it might be surprising to learn that whether you are married or not makes no difference as to eligibility for a partner visa to move to Sweden. Instead, the key criteria is whether you have previously lived together, or whether you are moving to Sweden to live together.

Couples who move in together when both partners already live in Sweden do not need to register their sambo status in any special way: it’s enough to live together while in a relationship (typically for longer than six months) and to have a “joint household”, which basically means sharing responsibility for the upkeep of the property and sharing some household costs.

But a sambo has different rights compared to an inneboende (a non-romantic cohabitant, or flatmate/housemate), and legally this status is somewhere in between an ordinary flatmate and a spouse. 

There are some rights reserved only for married couples and not sambos, and most of these apply after either the breakup of the partnership (whether through divorce or separation) or the death of one partner.

When a married couple goes through divorce, they must wait during a six-month cooling-off period if one or both partners has children or if one does not want to apply for divorce.

Then, shared property is divided equally, which includes a wide range of things from property to cars to bank accounts, if bought for both partners to share. This is the case no matter how much each partner paid towards the property or what proportion each partner owns. If one partner wants to keep the property, they must then pay the other partner 50 percent of the market value (not the original price).

For sambos, “shared property” is also divided 50:50 if the relationship breaks up, but this only usually includes the home and household goods, if they were bought for shared use, and not to things like cars, summer houses, or bank accounts.

This means it doesn’t apply if one partner moved into a property already owned by the other, and what’s more, many sambos choose to draw up a Cohabitation Agreement (samboavtal) if there are certain items you want to specifically include or exclude from the list of joint property. For example, if one person paid a greater share of the property price and wants to remain entitled to keep that, it might make sense to enter into an official agreement.

This agreement doesn’t need to be witnessed or registered, but it can be a good idea to prevent any disputes in the future. Note that any agreement becomes invalid if you later marry; then, the Marriage Code applies.

Under the Inheritance Code, spouses and cohabitants/sambos have different rights if their partner dies. For this reason, sambos may wish to draw up a will stipulating what they would want their partner to inherit. One famous example of why this can be important is the conflict between author Stieg Larsson’s partner, Eva Gabrielsson, and Larsson’s family, who automatically inherited his estate after his death. This prompted a lengthy legal dispute over these assets and particularly the copyrights to his books.

The other time there’s a difference between sambos and married couples is if a couple has children. A mother is automatically given custody of her child at birth, and in married couples this applies to the father too. If a sambo couple have a child together and want to share custody, the couple must report this to the authorities to confirm that the father is indeed the father.

The decision whether to get married or remain as sambos is an individual choice for each couple to make, so the crucial thing is that both partners are aware of what their rights are in each scenario and take any necessary steps (such as a joint will or cohabitation agreement) to protect their future.

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FAMILY

Five names you can’t give your baby in Sweden

Sweden has strict rules when it comes to naming a newborn child, as some parents have discovered over the years.

Five names you can't give your baby in Sweden

Here are some examples of names the Swedish Tax Agency has rejected.

Lucifer

Despite the fact that the name Lucifer means “light-bearer” in Latin and was originally the name of an angel, the Tax Agency in 2020 rejected the request of two parents’ from Uppsala who wanted to give the name to their child.

Although the agency deems other angelic names, like Gabriel and Michael, to be perfectly acceptable, it rejected Lucifer on the basis that it’s associated with the devil and therefore could cause offence, according to Upsala Nya Tidning (UNT).

There are 114 Lucifers living in Sweden, according to the Tax Agency.

Skatteverket’s decision to reject the name was upheld on appeal in court.

Pilzner

Another couple were also barred from using their first choice of name for their son born in August 2017.

They hoped to name the baby boy Pilzner after his father and grandfather – and the Pilsner lager.

“My father was known as Pilzner because he used to drink Pilsner,” the baby’s father, Matz Pilzner Johanneson, said to SVT Halland.

“I only drink Pilsner and since I was young, I have been referred to as Pilzner.”

Johanneson legally changed his first name to Matz Pilzner as an adult, and said he and his wife were “very disappointed” by Skatteverket’s decision regarding their three-month-old.

The agency ruled that the name, like the beer itself, was not suitable for a child.

Vladimir Putin

The name may be good enough for the Russian president, but not for Swedish authorities, who rejected a couple’s request to give their son two first names: Vladimir Putin.

In 2021, the couple, from the town of Laholm in southern Sweden, had their request rejected. It’s not clear exactly on what grounds the Tax Agency rejected the name – whether it was deemed to risk causing a problem for the child, or due to the fact that first names that clearly resemble surnames aren’t allowed (or perhaps both).

According to the Tax Agency, there are 1,483 people in Sweden who have Vladimir as a first name, and two who have it as a surname. Just one person in Sweden has the first name Putin.

Ford

The rule against using surnames as first names has caused issues for other couples as well, especially those who come from parts of the world where it’s more common to use surnames as first names, like North America.

In 2018, a Swedish-Canadian couple was banned from using the name Ford, despite the fact that it was a name the couple found in the father’s family tree.”We wanted to give our child an older name, a traditional one from my family. So we looked through my father’s family tree and found Ford there. We thought that name was really cool and wanted to bring it back,” Joeseph Kendrick told The Local at the time.

Q

Finally, a couple back in 2009 was banned from giving their child the somewhat unusual name Q, perhaps inspired by the quartermaster in the 2008 James Bond film Quantum of Solace, who went by the same name.

The couple, from Jämtland, argued that not only had their son been called Q since he was born, but he also responded to the name, so it therefore didn’t cause him any problems.

Unfortunately, the courts didn’t buy their argument, arguing that Q is a letter of the alphabet which is not typically used as a first name.

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