unmarried buying a house, should we marry

bubblybee

We are in the middle of buying a house - value less than £200,000. The contract will be a 50:50 one which I understand means that if something happens to me my other half gets the whole house.

We have no children. At the moment we have no wills but will do once we have the house. We have no notable savings.

My question is, given that we are not married, if something happens to one of us, will the other have to pay unnecessary taxes or other to inherit the house/any limited savings we may have at the time, that we would not have to pay if we were married.

We have been together 7 years and neither of us are really bothered about the whole idea of marriage or more importantly the circus/costs of a wedding. However, I want to make sure that if anything happened to one of us, the other wouldn't lose out because we are not married.

We plan to have children in 3 or so years time. We know the wills would need to be update but will this change the above situation?

Any advice would be gratefully received. Thank you

bryanb

There are 2 ways of owning the house.
1 Joint beneficial owners- you jointly own 100% and it automatically passes to survivor regardless of wills.
2 Joint tenants- Each owns half (or any percentage) They can will their half in any way they choose.

No circus/little cost if you marry in register office.

In some cases of coma / similar accident treatments, the next of kin (not partner) decides what is to happen, signs consent forms etc.

bubblybee

Hi Bryan B, I think it's the first one we are having.

Errata

Good solid info here http://www.lawontheweb.co.uk/basics/cohabit.htm

bryanb

bubblybee wrote: »

Hi Bryan B, I think it's the first one we are having.

Sounds good, but check, and instruct your solicitor to set up whichever you decide.

Person_one

bryanb wrote: »

There are 2 ways of owning the house.
1 Joint beneficial owners- you jointly own 100% and it automatically passes to survivor regardless of wills.
2 Joint tenants- Each owns half (or any percentage) They can will their half in any way they choose.

No circus/little cost if you marry in register office.

In some cases of coma / similar accident treatments, the next of kin (not partner) decides what is to happen, signs consent forms etc.

Sorry, but I don't think this is quite right. Your number 1 is actually 'joint tenants' and number 2 is known as 'tenants in common'.

At least that's what we were told when buying our place 3 months ago.

Errata

My parents had to change ownership of their house from Joint Tenants (they both owned all of it) to Tenants in Common (they each owned 50%). This allowed each of them to will their own 50% to whoever they wanted.
This is fully explained in the link I posted ^

daska

Should you marry? If you're buying a house and you're planning to have children then most emphatically yes. You don't have to have a big wedding or to-do about it, you don't even have to invite anyone, it'll cost you just over £100.

You'll get a lot of responses saying 'no need to bother if you're in a committed relationship, it's just a bit of paper'. But there is no such thing as a common-law husband or wife, you're either married with all the legal protection that comes with that status (in event of death or divorce), or you're not and you take your chances of losing a lot if the person you believed was Mr/s Right whizzes off into the sunset leaving you behind. People are entitled to take that risk if they want and for many people it works out just fine. Personally I was very glad I was married when my ex failed to come home one day because marriage is essentially a property contract and it's there to provide a framework for if things go wrong.

I'd just like to point out that I'm actually very romantic, but having been left holding the baby twice now I'm also very cynical

Angelic

I agree and wouldn't buy a house with a partner without marrying as it's too much of a risk and marriage is underrated now.

bryanb

Person_one wrote: »

Sorry, but I don't think this is quite right. Your number 1 is actually 'joint tenants' and number 2 is known as 'tenants in common'.

At least that's what we were told when buying our place 3 months ago.

Sorry, didn't have my thinking head on.

Primrose

I'm old fashioned enough to think that if you plan to have children you should get married. There can be all kinds of legal complications for a parent if their unmarried partner dies, or even if one parent has a serious accident, was in hospital on a life support machine, etc. How would you feel if that happened and his parents, as his next to kin, turned up and made a decision on that without consulting you, organised a funeral without consulting you, or were the beneficiaries of his life assurance policy under his company pension scheme where the trustees were allowed to exercise their discretion about next of kin?

What message does it give to children that their parents didn't care enough about making a public commitment to each other before bothering to bring them into the world? I assume both your parents gave you this stability when it mattered. Don't your future kids deserve it too? Please think again about your long term future. A wedding doesn't have to be expensive. You can do it as cheaply as you like but life sometimes has a nasty habit of the unexpected and it's better to be prepared for it.