Who gets the bond on a rental property?

Catbag

I need some advice for a friend as I've been trawling the internet and not found the solution to this problem.

The girlfriend (H) of my friend (D) has left him after 7 years, 6 of those years with them living together. They were a reconstructed family, with 2 of the children being his and 1 hers.

H moved up initially from the Midlands with just her daughter and stayed with me while looking for a property big enough for the 5 of them. Once she'd found one, some 4 months later, her mother paid the bond and first month's rent and D moved up a couple of weeks later with his kids. Hers was the only name on the tenancy agreement because of the hassle of posting the paperwork up and down the country. To cut a long story short, he has been working full time for the last few years while she has sat about all day playing Facebook games and having £1200 a month of various benefits going into her account. H told D it was only £600. She has now left (with a veeerrryy healthy bank balance), hired a lorry to strip the house of everything of worth and is scamming every last penny she can get from him.

He took over the tenancy in name when she left (2 months ago now) and has found somewhere more suitable for he and his 2 children to move into at the end of this month. He went to see the letting agent today to be told that, two months down the line, H called them this morning and wants a cheque for the bond to be sent to her. She told him that he could keep it in a telephone conversation six weeks or so ago. My question is this, where does he stand? It seems unlikely to me that, now he has taken the tenancy over, that she can just ring up out of the blue and demand it. The letting agent says that, short of a written declaration from H that the bond is to be paid to D, there's nothing he can do. The letting agent is known for being a little, shall we say, dubious in his dealings. Help!

dancingfairy

As far as I can see if her mother paid the deposit and hers was the name on the tenancy how can the partner have a claim to the deposit. It doesn't sound fair though but that's how I'd imagine it works.
When the tenancy was ended (by the tenant leaving) then it would have made most sense for a new contract to be drawn up with D paying a new deposit and then D would get it back. Since this doesn't appear to have happened I'd assume that it still belongs to the original person - sorry.
I have no knowledge of this so am happy to be corrected by other posters - it's just my thoughts.
df

Catbag

Hmm, my thoughts were going a little this way too. It's just so damned frustrating to watch him being taken for everything he has when we know she walked away from this relationship with at least £5000 in stashed benefit payments and she really has left b*gger all (money or furniture) for him and his kids. As he's still reeling from the breakdown, he acquiesced to a lot of what she wanted, to his detriment. She's now living in a fully furnished flat owned by her mother, claiming Housing Benefit for it and just left him with all the bills and a broken heart. It would appear that she's been planning this all with her mother for a year now

Catbag

Does no one think differently about this?

neas

the 1200 pound of benefits sounds like she was fiddling the system to me. Claiming housing benefit for rent and not declaring she wasnt still a single mother.

As 1200 seems quite high for a partner to get cause she has 2 kids and doesnt work...

Certainy i wont get that if my wife and I had two kids.

Catbag

That was Working and Child Tax Credits, Child Benefit for her daughter, and Housing Benefit. However, she is totally fiddling benefits now. She and her mother have different surnames so it's relatively easy to disguise the fact that her mother owns the flat she's living in.

moromir

Catbag wrote: »

Does no one think differently about this?

There is nothing dubious about the letting agent's procedure in this case.

If the lady's name was the only one on the tenancy agreement, and the agreement makes mention of x amount of deposit, then in accordance with the deposit legislation, that sum must be returned to her less any agreed deductions in the absence of any further instruction from her (ie a letter saying it can go to him).

thegirlintheattic

Legally the deposit goes back to the girlfriend.

I don't quite understand how the boyfriend has assumed tenancy if he is not on the agreement. It also seems likely as he was not on the tenancy that they were pulling a fast one with benefits, so that girlfriend could claim benefits as a single parent.

Catbag

No, my friend is as straight as a die and the thought of any benefit skullduggery would be enough to bring him out in a cold sweat. That said, he left the benefit stuff to his girlfriend to sort out as she knew more about it than he did. We live in a rural area and just because he has a fulltime job, doesn't mean that his earnings were any where near the average for the country. Despite working full time, they were still entitled to pretty much full housing benefit (£550 pm), then all other benefits on top. Of course he didn't know this until he found a bank statement down the back of the sofa...

Catbag

I've already gone into how it was that D was not a joint tenant. Whether you understand it or not, he has assumed the tenancy and this is because he was listed as an adult occupant on the tenancy agreement. It's a little irritating to be told that it is likely they were jointly on the fiddle, especially given the amount of time that said friend has spent trying to unravel what the partner has been up to. His ex partner has been behaving in a way bordering on the greedily psychotic. I was just trying to get some advice to help him come out of all this with something.

thegirlintheattic

You didn't say in your original post that he was listed as a 'permitted occupier' so still on the tenancy agreement, you just said her's was the only name on the tenancy agreement. That makes much more sense.