Advice Needed: Removing Name of Mortgage ...

neo1982

My partner bought a property with her brother 5 years ago, a year into the mortgage we decided to move into a place of our own together (we are renting), my partner continued paying her half of the mortgage until she found out that he was sub-letting.

Since then we have started a family, our daughter is 2 & we have another one on the way.

My partner has sent him several letters asking for her name to be taken off the mortgage, but he ignores everything. He has told my partner to her face that he is going to make her life hell. Nice bloke I'm sure you'll agree.

I have been saving for 3 years so we can buy our own property, however, until my partner has her name removed from that mortgage we can't get a mortgage together & I won't be able to afford a mortgage for a house that we want.

Our life has been on hold for 4 years now & I've had enough, I am now willing to spend my savings on taking this to court & having her ties with him completely removed so we can move on with our lifes.

We are going to have to force him to sell the property, we think it could also be in negative equity, but money is no object at the moment, our future & our children's future is.

Can anyone give me some advice on the path's I need to take? Cost implications & the timings involved with the process?

G_M

So, he's uncooperative yes? So agreeing to sell and split any proceeds is out.

You can stop contributing to the mortgage (though it sounds like you have) and leave him to cope - but if he's renting it and rent covers mortgage, there's no pressure on him there.

So you'll have to fight dirty.

Does the mortgage lender know the property is rented out? I guess not, and that would breach the mortgage terms. Threaten to tell the lender who may then switch the morthage to a BTL at a higher rate which he might struggle to meet. But remember BOTH mortgagees are liable.

Does HMRC know he's renting? Is tax being paid on the rental income? Same as above.

Hopefully the threat of the above will be enough to make him compromise and do a deal, but if not, think hard about whether you will follow through with the threats, and what it might mean.

edit - depending how professionally his rental is, he might also have invalid home insurance, might be criminally renting without a gas safety certificate, EPC etc etc etc

An alternat approach might be for your partner to move back into HER house. OK, there's tenants there. Did she agree to the tenancy? No. So use the courts to evict them from HER home. You'll need expert housing advice for this.

DVardysShadow

G_M wrote: »

An alternat approach might be for your partner to move back into HER house. OK, there's tenants there. Did she agree to the tenancy? No. So use the courts to evict them from HER home. You'll need expert housing advice for this.

This might be the way to go. Take care of the tenants - the innocent party in all of this - their tenancy should be respected within their agreement, but they should be given s21 notice.

Jowo_2

By sub-letting, do you mean he has live-in lodgers or that he's moved out and is renting it to tenants?

The following info comes from the Shelter website

Joint owners


If you are joint owners, you will be both be responsible for paying the mortgage. If one of you cannot pay your share, the other will be responsible for paying the whole mortgage. This is the case even if one of you is not living at the property.
In addition, one partner cannot:

• force the other partner to leave without a court order
• rent out or sell the home without the other partner's agreement or a court order
• take out a loan against the property without the other partner's agreement
• alter the terms of the mortgage without the other partner's permission.

Though the following link is pitched at relationship breakship breakdown between partners, I expect most of the guidance there is also helpful to joint owners.

http://england.shelter.org.uk/get_advice/families_and_relationships/relationship_breakdown/options_for_homeowners

chappers

Just bear in mind that if your partners brother doesn't earn enough to take on the mortgage on his own, that the mortgage company might not release your partner from her obligation.

Richard_Webster

Partner will need to apply to court for the sale of the property so that she can get her share (if nay) of the equity and be released form her obligations under the mortgage. She will have to consult solicitors to initially threaten to go to court if former partner doesn't agree to sell or buy her out. If he doesn't do anything then she will have to carry out the threat and take the proceedings and this will cost a lot.

If she eventually gets the order and there some equity left then hopefully she will get a costs order in her favour and if there is any equity these can be paid for out of her ex's share of equity. If there is no equity then in practice she will have to fund it.

Not much help to OP I know - but I hope that people yet to buy together will read these threads and consider carefully.

Buying a property together involves a lot of commitment, and as pointed out above, it can be very expensive to extricate your self if something goes wrong. Buying a property together involves a level of commitment not far short of that of marriage, yet many are not sufficiently sure of their relationship to marry will commit to buying together. That doesn't make sense to me - the fact that there is some residual doubt over the relationship should be enough warning so they don't buy together, because this kind of potentially very expensive financial mess can result.

neo1982

Apologies if it didn't read properly, her brother is still living in the property & has lodgers, I don't know if you would class that as sub-letting. I believe sub-letting is renting out a property that you rent yourself.

When she bought the place 5 years ago, we had only been together a couple of months & she wanted something to fall back on just in case we didn't work out. I guess I was marriage material in her eyes eventually :-) I wanted to tell her not to buy the place with him, but it wasn't my place to say it.

Looking back on it now, it's probably the biggest mistake she will ever make. Her brother is a bitter, twisted idiot & there has been no reason for this at all, we didn't have an arguement with him, she just moved out & I think he took offence to this.

Either way, at the moment he is winning & we are both nearly 30, we can't let this control our future & our family.

Whatever it takes, I refuse to be controlled by someone else & if we get into financial difficulty then we will have to stick through it together.

You are very right in what you say, anyone who is thinking of buying a house with someone, make sure you know what you are getting yourself into before you do it, or it could haunt you for many years.