Rational design of these complex, noncollinear spin textures in vdW magnets remains an open challenge. Current strategies for inducing noncollinearity includes desymmetrisation through Moiré twisting, e.g. noncollinear spin textures in four-layer CrI 3 stacks, en-hancing higher-order spin-orbit derived magnetic interactions, and using lower-symmetry crystal structures. Extensive computational and theoretical searches for low-symmetry inorganic vdW materials have uncovered a handful of compounds which could host these states, such as the 1D type ordering in orthorhombic CrSBr and noncollinear helical edge states in candidate Weyl semimetal WTe 2 . Focussing solely on inorganic materials however overlooks one of the largest classes of known noncollinear magnets: coordination frameworks containing molecular ligands. The use of molecular ligands typically lowers the structural symmetry, and hence permits the interactions required for noncollinearity, such as anti-symmetric Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions (DMI) or canting of the local single-ion anisotropy axes. There are now a number vdW coordination frameworks with noncollinear magnetic structures; however their structural complexity also typically inhibits rational design or tuning of the magnetic interactions. Indeed, even in the highly-tunable vdW metal imidazolates, MUV-1X(M) and MUV-8X(M), the deviations from collinearity cannot be readily controlled and are small. Metal dihalide N-heterocycles MX 2 L are a modular family of materials, in which the organic ligand, L, and metal, M, can be varied while retaining the structural connectivity: metal halide chains connected by organic ligands into 2D rectangular layers (Fig. ). These materials are typically collinear antiferromagnets with the strongest superexchange interaction being along the MX 2 chain. The sign of the interaction depends most strongly on the metal: Ni, Co and Fe form ferromagnetic chains and Cu and Cr form antiferromagnetic chains The spatial relationship between MX 2 chains is dictated by the organic ligand: the distance between chains is determined by ligand length and the angle is controlled by the bonding geometry of the ligand (as in supramolecular cage chemistry). The controllable nature of the structure means they are an ideal family to realise targetted magnetic phases: for example both CuCl 2 (btd) and CrCl 2 (pym) have proven ripe for investiga-tions of 1D quantum magnetism. In this paper we report four noncollinear van der Waals magnets, MCl 2 L, where M = Ni and Fe, L = pyrimidine (pym) and 2,1,3benzothiadiazole (btd). In each compound the noncollinearity leads to a net weak ferromagnetic moment within the layer with either a very large canting angle or large coercive field. We target these noncollinear states by connecting ferromagnetic MCl 2 chains with strong local anisotropy using organic ligands with non 180º binding angles, thereby inducing interchain DMI interactions and ensuring the local single-ion anisotropy axes canted. We solve their structures using a combination of single-crystal X-ray diffraction (SCXD), powder X-ray diffraction (PXRD) and pow-der neutron diffraction (PND), uncovering a low temperature structural phase transition in FeCl 2 (pym). Using bulk magnetic measurements and low temperature PND we determine their noncollinear magnetic ground states, showing that the weak ferromagnetic layers order between layers antiferromagnetically in FeCl 2 (pym), FeCl 2 (btd) and NiCl 2 (pym) and ferromagnetically in NiCl 2 (btd). Measurement of the magnetisation as a function of field uncovers that all antiferromagnetic compounds show low-field metamagnetic transitions, and both Ni compounds have very large hysteresis (µ 0 H c > 1 T, Fig. , S6-13) with FeCl 2 (pym) showing soft magnetic behaviour, despite the antiferromagnetic ground state. Density-functional theory (DFT) calculations and diffuse scattering analysis allow us, together with symmetry arguments, to establish a hierarchy of interactions in these compounds thus allowing us to rationalise the magnetic function as arising from the competition between Heisenberg antiferromagnetic interchain exchange and spin-orbit coupling derived interactions. This allows us to suggest design rules for targetting noncollinear states in metal organic layered magnets. for both the Fe and Ni analogues. Aqueous synthesis produces the bispyrimidine phases, whereas FeCl 2 (pym) can be readily synthesised in methanol and NiCl 2 (pym) in 2:1 ethanoldiethyl ether mixtures. Single crystals suitable for X-ray diffraction of FeCl 2 (pym) were grown by the slow diffusion of pym into a methanolic solution of FeCl 2 • 4 H 2 O, but we were unable to grow single crystals of the other analogues. ) was omitted and magnetic Bragg intensity at higher Q was negligible. For NiCl 2 (btd) the magnetic Bragg intensity was fixed to values determined from magnetic Rietveld refinement (Fig. ).