Mortgage/title deeds name question

L_L

We are moving house - sale and purchase are all agreed.

We got married 3 years ago and have never changed name on mortgage or title deeds, so it is still in my maiden name, which is joint with my husband.

We are going to port our mortgage to our new house and so need to change name on mortgage to married name to pass credit check (all my id, electoral role and bank accounts are using married name) and change to right name - no problem here, can show marriage certificate and get this changed.

The issue we have is that once the mortgage is in my married name we're not sure whether the title deeds for the property we are selling need changing from my maiden name to married name before we can sell it. I've spoken to a couple of people from my mortgage company and they have different views. The first said send a copy of our marriage certificate with the new mortgage application and a covering letter to explain that we got married and it will be fine, no need to change current mortgage. The second said we need to change the name on the current mortgage as we're porting the interest rate and then we need to change the title deeds with the land registry through our solicitor before we can sell the house as you can't sell if they don't match.

Does anyone know what we need to do?

If we do need to change the title deeds, does anyone know what this will cost, fee from Land Registry, and can we do this ourselves or do we need to get our solicitor involved and how much will this cost?

Thanks for any advice

davidmcn

L_L wrote: »

I've spoken to a couple of people from my mortgage company. The first said send a copy of our marriage certificate with the new mortgage application and a covering letter to explain that we got married and it will be fine, no need to change current mortgage. The second said we need to change the name on the current mortgage as we're porting the interest rate and then we need to change the title deeds with the land registry through our solicitor before we can sell the house as you can't sell if they don't match.

Does anyone know what we need to do?

You need to tell your mortgage company that their second employee is clearly an idiot.

You don't need to do anything about the name on your existing mortgage account.

L_L

Thanks David. The mortgage provider is Coventry Building Society and my husband also tried to call them back to get a clear answer but couldn't get a straight answer out of them so it left us confused. We just don't want to get to the point where the house move is delayed because of this.

Land_Registry

The conveyancing process recognises a marriage certificate in the same way as any other process would as official confirmaiton that you have changed your name and can therefore sell/mortgage/lease the property in your new name.

Marriage certificates, in the same way as death certificates, are the official way of confirming changes as they are administered/issued by an official body.

The buyer or their conveyancer would check the registered details, query the difference in names (if not already aware) and you would then supply them with an official copy of the marriage certificate. They would then lodge this with the remaining paperwork to be registered as and when the sale has gone through.

We would not update the register to reflect the name change itself but simply remove your details and add the new owners in the normal way.

If you did want to update the register then you can apply to do so by simply completing an application form and lodging it with the marriage certificate.

L_L

Thanks Land Registry representative, just to confirm, it doesn't matter if I change the name with Coventry BS on my current mortgage now or when I apply for the new one as long as my conveyancer can supply an official copy of my marriage certificate to the buyers conveyancer to go with the paperwork when we sell?

Land_Registry

L_L - that should be the case