Living with Partner - Buying New House..Advice Please

Dopple

I've been living with my partner for about 10 years now. It's her house. It cost about £40K. Worth about £110K now. Mortgage being paid off at about £280 a month with insurance. 10 years left on it.
We want to move to a bigger house in the £170-£190K range. My partner has an income of about £40K a year, I have no income at the moment but have £100K savings and can put up to half of that as a deposit on new house.
So it's a quite a complicated situation, and I would like advice from those who have been in similar situations on the best way to go forward with this.

Cheers.

Radiantsoul

What do you want the outcome to be? Do you want to both own the house?

loopy_lass

i would say think carefully about any decisions you make and the consequences of them, hopefully everything will remain hunky dorey.... but.. if one day it goes pete tong, what do you want out of it all... sorry to be negative, but i thought everything was great for me too and one day he up and left, taking the house with him.... even though i had paid half of everything, we just put everything in his name for ease.... mistake!!!!

loops

RobS77

Two options sprinf to mind- getting a declaration of trust put in place stating that you contributed unequal shares to the purchase price, and also a cohabitation agreement. Personally I would go with the former.

Dopple

Thanks for the advice.
I think some sort of legal argreement that I owns about 30% of the new property and my partner owns the rest is the way to go.

CLAPTON

Dopple wrote: »

Thanks for the advice.
I think some sort of legal argreement that I owns about 30% of the new property and my partner owns the rest is the way to go.

confused ..if the new property will cost 170,000 and you put up 100,000 cash why will you own only 30%?

joolley

CLAPTON wrote: »

confused ..if the new property will cost 170,000 and you put up 100,000 cash why will you own only 30%?

He can put up to half of his £100k. That is £50k out of £170K. Roughly 30%.

joolley

cabbage

Hi
Make a Will each and I would buy as tenants in common and then get a declaration of trust. That way you each can specify your share of the house to represent the money you have each put into it. Hopefully you won't need to do anything else and have a long and happy life together but if the worst was to happen you would each have a share of the house. This has implications on death ie you can will your share to anyone and also on nursing home fees. Seek specialist advice and get it right now and it will save lots of solicitors bills and heartache later on.

RobS77

If you are concerned about nursing home fees then certainly as a poster above referred to making a Will is essential- buy as tenants-in-common and grant your partner a life interest to occupy the property for the rest of his life or until he consents to give it up, or alternatively leave a fully discretionary trust with instructions to grant a revocable life interest which can be revoked if he goes into a nursing home.

wise_fool

RobS77 wrote: »

If you are concerned about nursing home fees then certainly as a poster above referred to making a Will is essential- buy as tenants-in-common and grant your partner a life interest to occupy the property for the rest of his life or until he consents to give it up, or alternatively leave a fully discretionary trust with instructions to grant a revocable life interest which can be revoked if he goes into a nursing home.

A discretionary trust provides powers to the trustees to advance capital or income to any of the potential beneficiaries. Also they may 'lend' assets to the surviving spouse.

Unless I'm missing something, trustees don't have the power to grant revokable life interests with these. Why not just make a will with a flexible life interest for the surviving spouse which can be revocable and with powers to advance capital away from spouse in the form of PETs?

Does anyone still use nil rate band discretionary trusts anymore? I don't see the point when there are better options available?

RobS77

wise_fool wrote: »

A discretionary trust provides powers to the trustees to advance capital or income to any of the potential beneficiaries. Also they may 'lend' assets to the surviving spouse.

Unless I'm missing something, trustees don't have the power to grant revokable life interests with these. Why not just make a will with a flexible life interest for the surviving spouse which can be revocable and with powers to advance capital away from spouse in the form of PETs?

Does anyone still use nil rate band discretionary trusts anymore? I don't see the point when there are better options available?

The only context where people would normally I think use an NRB trust is where they are unmarried, unless they want to build in protection I suppose against nursing home fees for surviving spouse.

The power of appointment can extend to the granting of a life interest: I have done a number of these recently in order to mitigate the income tax by appointing the income to a tax payer who is taxed at the lower rate. It can be done with a property though.

Its an interesting point regarding the granting of a flexible life interest: I have always done them on discretionary trusts.

The lending power is one we sometimes use as well by lending the assets to a parent who can then give them onto children, so they are never added to parents estate for IHT and can also provide a double saving if parent survives seven years.

Ah you an accountant/solicitor by the way?