relationship breakdown and selling house

lizzymouse

hello someone from the mortgage forum advised me to post my situation here if anyone has advice i would be very grateful:

hi all
i fear i am in quite a bad situation. here is summary of my current position

husband and i bought house together in joint names on mortgage in november 2007, house was bought for 140K with a 126k mortgage on it. My parents were able to give us 20k last year, 12k of which went to paying off mortgage, the remaining 8k is currently in premium bonds in my husbands name only. so we now owe about 112k on the mortgage.
unfortunately, relationship has broken down and husband wants a clean break, seperate finances, house up for sale, the whole shooting match.

questions are

- what will house now be worth and can we legally sell it if its worth less than what we owe on it and how does that work?
- what will be the cost of selling it, i.e. what is base price we can sell it for to pay off mortgage, solicitor, etc etc
- can he legally put it up for sale withough my consent, as i would rather stay put until house price situation improves as i can only see we are both going to end up in debt.
- my parents want the 8K back that hasnt gone into the mortgage,since these are really are only savings, we have no other money between us.

what would people advise? think he is willing to be reasonable and go and see a solicitor with me to get facts, but if he insists on selling it, where do i stand?

awful, awful start to the new year :-(

belfastgirl23

For me the biggest issue is whether you sell or not. I do think you might be best just going ahead and selling at whatever price you can get - there are no guarantees that the market will rise much over the next while and you shouldn't underestimate the wear and tear on you both whilst you have to deal with each other (and perhaps tenants) until you sell. Are you sure you don't partly want to hold on to the house in the hope that things will work themselves out?

for what it's worth you could check here http://www.nationwide.co.uk/mortgages/calculators/housepriceworth.htm
although i did it recently and I thought it probably overvalued what our house would be worth. You could also ask a couple of local estate agents for a quick guesstimate without seeing the place, although they do often up the ante a bit since many people will go with the EA who tells them their house is worth more.

As a matter of urgency I think you should ask your husband to return the 8k to your parents before anything else - things can get difficult during divorces and you should do this now before it becomes tricky. If it's clearly their money and he is trying to be decent then it shouldn't be a problem.

Would you think of getting some professional mediation to deal with some of these financial issues? I would suggest going with a not for profit organisation - eg here http://www.familymediationcouncil.org.uk/

It is a horrible thing to have happened though, you do have my sympathies.