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Tenants In Common

My husband an I own our house as Tenants in Common. I own 95% he 5%. He wants to sign over his 5% to me therefore me owning the house 100%. The land registry have said this is not straight forward and will need a solicitor to do this for us. We can't really afford a solicitor so was hoping to do at least some of the "leg work" ourselves and then use a solicitor for the final signing stages. Does anyone have any guidance on this? His Will leaves everything to me (if this makes a difference to any advice given).

Thanks
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  • F_T_Buyer
    F_T_Buyer Posts: 1,139 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Combo Breaker
    You would need a solicitor to do this, and it should be a simple process.

    The whole point of having 'tenants in common' is you own a share, and your partner owns a share. So when one of you dies, their assets which include a share of the property follows the guidlines of their will. And so, anyone could inherit their share of the property.

    Usually this goes to a trust, when then lets the other partner to live in the property rent free until their death. This is done to make use of their inheritance tax threshold.
  • F_T_Buyer wrote:
    You would need a solicitor to do this, and it should be a simple process.

    The whole point of having 'tenants in common' is you own a share, and your partner owns a share. So when one of you dies, their assets which include a share of the property follows the guidlines of their will. And so, anyone could inherit their share of the property.

    Usually this goes to a trust, when then lets the other partner to live in the property rent free until their death. This is done to make use of their inheritance tax threshold.

    Thanks for this. The Land Registry said I would need to get the permission of the mortgage company and the company that maintains the road etc (it is an unadopted road) I was going to do things like this to keep the solicitors bill down. Is there anything else I could do? In his Will everything is left to me so I have no worries there
  • Pere_Ubu wrote:
    My husband an I own our house as Tenants in Common. I own 95% he 5%. He wants to sign over his 5% to me therefore me owning the house 100%. The land registry have said this is not straight forward and will need a solicitor to do this for us. We can't really afford a solicitor so was hoping to do at least some of the "leg work" ourselves and then use a solicitor for the final signing stages. Does anyone have any guidance on this? His Will leaves everything to me (if this makes a difference to any advice given).

    Thanks

    Can I ask your reasons for wanting to do this? As F_T_Buyer says the usual reason for owning your property as TIC (usually 50:50) is to mitigate inheritance tax or if either or both have been previously married and want to make sure children from their previous marriage don't lose out on their inheritance.
  • elliebean wrote:
    Can I ask your reasons for wanting to do this? As F_T_Buyer says the usual reason for owning your property as TIC (usually 50:50) is to mitigate inheritance tax or if either or both have been previously married and want to make sure children from their previous marriage don't lose out on their inheritance.

    We are getting divorced
  • Sorry, I didn't think of the obvious :o
  • Presumably you have a solicitor already dealing with the divorce - they can help you sort it out. James.
  • jamesn wrote:
    Presumably you have a solicitor already dealing with the divorce - they can help you sort it out. James.

    No the divorce is straight forward neither of us will object to a divorce so I don't mind if he files for it and visa versa. It's just the Tenants in Common stuff. In order to save money wanted to do as much of the "leg" work ourselves
  • Pere_Ubu wrote:
    No the divorce is straight forward neither of us will object to a divorce so I don't mind if he files for it and visa versa. It's just the Tenants in Common stuff. In order to save money wanted to do as much of the "leg" work ourselves


    Whoa up here a bit. This is not as straightforward as you think. You need a court order confirming your split of the marital assets and preventing either of you claiming against the other in the future. I don't think a court is going to find your intentions fair to your husband and will query it. If you decide not to have a court order (it can be an agreed document presented to the court) in the future your husband could come back for a share of the property or any other assets you have accrued and vice versa if you have not remarried.

    The leg work you can do yourselves is to set out in writing what you are splitting and how. This has to include any pensions, savings, shares and property. You can take this to a solicitor and ask them to draw the order up and you can lodge it with the court yourself but our local county court is rejecting documents now unless they have an explaination of why it is considered fair if one party's share appears unduly low. You could draw up the land registry document yourself as well by downloading it from their website. You will need permission of the mortgage company and you need to indemnify your husband against you defaulting on the mortgage later on if they will not allow him to remove his name.

    You need to spend some money going to a solicitor and get advice about what you want to do and where to start. Some do a free first consultation, many do a reduced fee first consultation.
  • We were not going to file for divorce until we had sorted out the property. We are not in a hurry to get divorced we were simply going to focus on the Tenants in Common stuff first. Is it not possible to do it like this (before getting a divorce?)
  • Pere_Ubu wrote:
    We were not going to file for divorce until we had sorted out the property. We are not in a hurry to get divorced we were simply going to focus on the Tenants in Common stuff first. Is it not possible to do it like this (before getting a divorce?)

    In that case you can download the form TR1 from the Land Registry website and complete it yourselves. You will however need the permission of your mortgage company. I am not sure why you would need the permission of the company that does the road.

    You could do this without a solicitor if you understand the form. It might be an idea to take a look at it and see what you think.

    I think he is unwise to do this without taking legal advice first.
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