Elastic effects can have a pronounced effect on the phase-separation process in solids. The classical Ginzburg—Landau energy can be modified to account for such elastic interactions. The evolution of the system is then governed by diffusion equations for the concentrations of the alloy components and by a quasi-static equilibrium for the mechanical part. The resulting system of equations is elliptic-parabolic and can be understood as a generalization of the Cahn—Hilliard equation. In this paper we give a derivation of the system and prove an existence and uniqueness result for it.