Putting another name on the mortgage

Sallyann58

I hope this is the right place for this query.
I bought my house a couple of years before I met my husband. He has now put a fair bit of money into the house with stuff we've had done; by my reckoning, we have spent equal amounts.
The fixed rate comes to an end early next year and we want to take out a joint mortgage, I would also like to have his name on the deeds.
I am almost certainly going to be made redundant at the end of this year with very little pay off. Given the very low chances of me finding another job, I'm going to struggle to get another mortgage - which is the main reason we want to take out a joint mortgage.
Does anyone know how I go about getting my husband's name put on the deeds and does he have to be on the deeds for us to take a joint mortgage?
I've tried asking one or two people in the mortgage business but I can't get much sense - they just want to sell me a mortgage before answering the question.
Many thanks

Person_one

Talk to your lender, then to a solicitor. The lender will want the names on the deeds to match the names on the mortgage, so both will have to be on both.

SG_Guy

When you take out your next mortgage, you will apply in joint names and the solicitor will do what is a known as a transfer of equity. You need to decide if you want to hold it as tenants-in-common or as joint tenants. Joint tenants simply means the surviving spouse inherits all the property while for tenants-in-common, you can decide how much equity each partner holds e.g. 50:50 or some other ratio. Obviously, as the surviving spouse cannot live in half a property, this means that you will have to take care of this in a Will. Some reasons for holding the property as tenants-in-common include minimising inheritance tax (i.e. if one of you is not domiciled in the UK; on the other hand, if both of you are UK domiciled, then transfers between spouses is unlimited, so no reason to hold it as tenants-in-common in this case) and equalising assets.

In terms of the solicitor, it is usually easier to use the same solicitor for the transfer of equity as for the other legal work (i.e. removing the name of the existing lender from the property and adding the name of the new mortgage provider, etc.). The cost varies depending on the value of the property but would be around £250-£400 pounds + VAT I reckon.

Equally, you might also consider not adding your husband's name to the mortgage, since you can always just specify that he inherits the property in your Will.

I'm not a lawyer, so best to seek legal advice.