Married couple - tenants in common?

gazzabboi

If you are married you should be joint tenants beneficially. You love your partner, so forget the money, a relationship is built on love. If you die everything will be given to them. Tenants in common is for people who are paranoid and are expecting something to go wrong, the house may not go to the other half on death. Its for people who are petty like for eg, I bought the TV, so its mine. Going 60/40 with your better half cant be a good relationship. That's my thoughts anyway.

virtuallyfree

I still think it is a rather complicated and costly way to proceed.
Are we not supposed to be saving our money?
Solicitors cost a lot of money and they stir up these issues badly when it comes to divorce, i am only trying to warn you because I have been thru it.
It is not very nice to have to sign agreements either.
Try to keep it so you can have a clean break, god forbid it happens.
Cant think off the top of my head of another solution.
If Your husband cannot repay half of deposit, maybe you could sort out some other arrangement, could he do some chores that you hate for the next few years!!!

urbanmyth

Thanks all for your input. We discussed it and rather than a % I would get back what I put in (deposit) and we would split any profit.

Thanks in particular to Georgesmum.

TBagpuss

It's not difficult to do - you simply need to make sure that your declaration of trust defines how your respective shares will be calculated. You can also specifically state that it is your joint intention that the agreement will be taken into account in the event of any future separation or divorce.

It's correct that if you were to divorce, the court could override your agreement, as the Judge has an over-riding obligation to make an order which amounts to a fair settlement "taking into account all the relevant circumstances" - the fact that you have entered into the agreement is a relevant circumstances, in the same way that the terms of a pre-nup are relevant.

In general, more time that passes after the agreement and declaration are made, the more likely it is that a judge might consider it fair to disregard (or partially disregard) your agreement. It would also be more likely to be overridden if there were to be other significant changes in your situation - for instance if you did have children, if one of became ill and unable to work, or if there were substantial further contributions from one of you but you had not updated the deed (this could potentially include non-financial contributions)

your conveyancing solicitor will be able to advise about the wording of the declaration.

In my experience, having the discussion now, and recording it can actually help avoid marital problems, as the ability to discuss and agree on issues when you are on good terms helps reduce the risk of them turning into massive issues further down the line. it also tends to mean that if the worst happens and you do split up, you are much more likely to be able to achieve a (relatively) amicable divorce, which saves an enormous amount of stress and quite a lot of money.

Newly_retired

gazzabboi wrote: »

If you are married you should be joint tenants beneficially. You love your partner, so forget the money, a relationship is built on love. If you die everything will be given to them. Tenants in common is for people who are paranoid and are expecting something to go wrong, the house may not go to the other half on death. Its for people who are petty like for eg, I bought the TV, so its mine. Going 60/40 with your better half cant be a good relationship. That's my thoughts anyway.

There are many circumstances where two parties bring different financial contributions to a marriage and there is no reason why this cannot be reflected in the proportions in which a tenancy- in -common is arranged.
For couples where one or both has children from a previous relationship, being tenants-in-common is the best basis for writing a will where those children benefit from the parent's estate. There are important reasons for doing this properly.

Georgesmum79

urbanmyth wrote: »

Thanks all for your input. We discussed it and rather than a % I would get back what I put in (deposit) and we would split any profit.

Thanks in particular to Georgesmum.

Hi,

No worries, I am here to learn and share.

Just a quick thought...another poster here made me realise that if the house market was to crash catastrophically, the percentage that you own of the property might not amount to the cash amount you put in. I am going to drop a line to my solicitor and ask advice on this: I wonder if it is a case that you just have to take the risk that house prices might fall as well as rise?

urbanmyth

Just to update on this: our solicitor is drawing up a deed that sets out that after mortgage redemption and cost of selling, if there's sufficient equity I will get back the sum I put in and so would hubby. Any remaining equity would be split equally. In the event the total equity doesn't to the total we put in, I would get 80% and hubby 20% of whatever equity there is (represents our contribution to the deposit). If we have to sell in negative equity, we would both be liable for the costs equally. This seemed the fairest way to do it.

We know a divorce court could ignore the deed, but we have no dependants and don't plan on doing so any time in the future. If that changes, we'll review everything again.