Help! Need advise on breakup finances and house sale.

philco_uk

Hi Everyone,
Thanks in advance for reading this, and offering any useful help.
Quick version is I own a house with my ex (I wont be the last guy to be in this position in sure). We owned a house previous to this one and sold it to buy this place. We just had it valued as we want to sell, but we need to work out who owns what exactly. At the start of all of this we put our money together to but the first house, she put in 62, I put in 12, which covered all the costs. And 60 of which was used as deposit. So who paid the stamp duty then in an equal 50:50 split? Did we both pay half? and half the legal fees? She is under the impression that 100% of that original deposit is hers, whereas I think that its the stamp duty and fees, divided by 2, is taken off both our contributions, and whatever is left is our owned percentage of the deposit, which we will get back.

Any ideas?
Thanks.
Phil.

lincroft1710

If there is no agreement in place saying how money raised from the sale of the house following a parting of the ways should be divided and you can't agree between yourselves then you need to see a solicitor.

zzzLazyDaisy

To be honest, none of the questions you are asking have any relevance to the current situation, and who owns what share of the house now.

The only questions of relevance are:

1 is the house jointly owned as joint tenants or tenants in common?

2 if held as tenants in common, was a deed of trust signed setting out your respective shares in the house?

3 are you married or cohabiting?

4 if married, are there any children?

Come back with this information and we will be able to point you in the right direction.

philco_uk

ok so its joint tenancy (50:50),
no deed of trust was signed.
we are cohabiting (not married),
no children.


Thanks.

zzzLazyDaisy

Okay then its simple.

You legally own the house 50/50. The time to protect deposits or register the house in unequal shares was when the house was purchased. It is too late now to go back once the relationship has failed and say 'oh but it is only fair that...'

So as things stand, you sell the house and the solicitor remits the net proceeds, half to each of you.

The only things to say, from a more pragmatic point of view, is if the person who feels they are losing out then decides to be difficult and obstruct the sale, it might be better to come to some sort of amicable agreement.

Either way, I do suggest that you each take independent legal advice as it will save a lot of argument in the long run.

Edit - who paid the bills/stamp duty/etc on the house is completely irrelevant. The only thing that matters is the equity in the house and how it should be distributed.

hazyjo

Think there might be a 3 year rule - when I split with my husband last year (married so might be different), it wasn't classed as 50/50. I could take the money I'd put in at the beginning (over £130k) and he took the £28k he'd put in. We presumed that all the expenses in buying the house was 50/50 from that money. Luckily we had enough profit, and had paid off enough mortgage, to recoup what we put in (and more).

We also said that all profit and all money we'd paid off should be split 50/50 (ie I wouldn't take a bigger chunk even though I'd put more in at the beginning).

If we'd been married for more than 3 years, I think he could have got 50/50 and I'd have been gutted, but then you always think these things will last... If you have owned the house for more than 3 years, you'll probably find the above 50/50 rule does apply. They might base it on the length of your relationship or previous house ownership as well as just this one. Time for legal advice.

Is there any chance you could still have the £62k and £12k after selling the house and paying fees? I would personally try to give back the same amounts (or as near to), but that's me.

Jx