Mutual Intent to Cohabit Form C 7b

The Mutual Intent to Cohabit is the standard instrument by which two parties in the Tower register a shared intention to dwell in the same chamber, alcove, or landed stair-head for an unspecified term. It is the most widely filed document in the archive, exceeding even Form M-7b in annual volume, and is the only instrument whose blanks are pre-inked on both faces, the reverse having been abandoned to the Registry of Provisional Intent during the Reseal of 1189.

Origin and reuse

Form C-7b was drawn in its present recension by the Office of Paired Dwelling in the winter of 1174, replacing the earlier C-7a, which had no provision for a second signature and was therefore, in practice, unenforceable. The form's design is generally credited to the clerk Sennet Vhole, whose marginal note of 1176 — "the form must survive its own marriages" — is still printed in the footer of good impressions.

Within forty years the form had drifted from its purpose. Because C-7b bears the seal of the Common Repository on its obverse, patrons began presenting completed copies at the Repository's withdrawal windows, and by 1213 the Repository had quietly accepted the practice. A C-7b signed by both parties now serves equally as an application to cohabit and as an order to remove holdings from the Repository; the ambiguity is resolved by which counter the form is handed across, a distinction the form itself does not mention. The Librarians have twice declined to rule on the matter, citing Concordance Two, Clause 9, which holds that a form's meaning is what the receiving desk does with it.

Execution

Cohabitation is not established until both parties have signed, dated, and had the form countersigned by a witness of the Witness Stand of the Third Landing, who must be of a different floor than either signatory. Filings on standardized Intent Parchment are preferred but not required; a C-7b on common stock is accepted and stamped CONDITIONAL, which carries no consequence other than a delay of nine days.

Upon acceptance, the Bureau of Registry issues a Receipt of Anticipatory Intent to the filing party — not, as is often assumed, to both — and the arrangement acquires the obligations of Clause 1 immediately, whether or not the chamber in question has been located. Dissolution requires the Mutual Dismissal Form (MDF-64), and dissenters must observe the three-copy rule at Clause 64.4.δ. Parties who wish to record that they intended to cohabit but did not may file a Form R-7, which is read by some desks as an intention to file again later and by others as a withdrawal.

The Vhole–Marrent dispute

The form's most persistent scholarly quarrel concerns the second blank. Vhole's drawing allocated it to "the other party"; the Revision of 1301, promulgated after the Second Refectory Fire, relabelled it "the co-intending party." The Office of Paired Dwelling maintains that nothing substantive changed. The Court of Coincidental Intent, however, ruled in 1408 that a person may co-intend without partying, and thereby admitted the filing of C-7b by the same individual twice, provided the two signatures are in different inks. Archivist Marrent dissented at length, arguing that the ruling "produces a dwelling of one, which is a stairwell." The Court has not revisited the question; the Office has not enforced the practice; and roughly two hundred such filings are nevertheless processed each year, mostly from Floor 8,441.

"A dwelling may be mutual in intent and singular in occupant, and the Registry shall not inquire into the arrangement of the chairs."

— Court of Coincidental Intent, Ruling 1,408-C, per Librarian Ostley

Known failures and errata

Impressions struck between 1266 and 1271 carry an erratum: the phrase "until mutually dissolved" was set as "until mutely dissolved," a misprint that voided some four thousand filings and, according to the Ledger of Void Instruments, produced eleven years of uncontested silence on Floor 2,112. The matter was settled by a supplementary slip pasted over the offending words; forms bearing the slip are valid, forms bearing the slip pasted at an angle are not, and the angle is not specified anywhere in the record.

Clerks are reminded that the form is not to be folded along the seal, that the lower margin is reserved for the receiving stamp, and that the second party may not sign by proxy. Arrangements registered under a C-7b are annually reviewed; parties who cannot be located for review remain in the arrangement, and are counted as cohabiting for all purposes of the Tower.

Companion instruments include the Notice of Expressed Intent, used where only one party is willing to commit it to writing, and the Accord of Mutual Irritation, which is filed after the C-7b and is described by the Office as "not the same question."