making sure my wife would get the house?

Dan-Dan

Hi

Just to clear my mind before we make wills

I have a mortgage in my name , i am the name on the deeds , my wife is not on the mortgage nor the deeds

We have children

We both have life cover with critical illness

I want my wife if anything happened to me to obviously keep the house

What do i need to do , if anything to make sure this happens?

Thanks

dc197

According to this quiz, if you die in England without a will, are married, have children, and yoru estate is worth over 250K, then by default......


"The husband, wife or civil partner keeps all the assets (including property), up to £250,000, and all the personal possessions, whatever their value.
The remainder of the estate will be shared as follows:

the husband, wife or civil partner gets an absolute interest in half of the remainder
the other half is then divided equally between the surviving children
If a son or daughter (or other child where the deceased had a parental role) has already died, their children will inherit in their place."

https://www.gov.uk/inherits-someone-dies-without-will/y/england-and-wales/yes/yes/yes


With a will I'm sure you can specify whatever you want. I don't think your wife's name being missing from the deeds or mortgage would matter, either with or without a will: you may be able to leave your house to me if you wanted, and I'm not on your deeds.

G_M

1) why not transfer the property into joint names and own a 'Joint Tenants'? Yes you'd need the lender's consent, but it should not be a problem.

2) why not specify in your will that she will get the property. You should get mirror will drawn up so that whichever of you dies first the other inherits. You should also consider the possibility of you both dying (eg a car/plane crash, ad specify what happens in that case, and how any kids would be protected.

AdrianC

G_M wrote: »

why not transfer the property into joint names and own a 'Joint Tenants'? Yes you'd need the lender's consent, but it should not be a problem.

That depends on if there's a reason (poor credit history etc) why the missus isn't already on the mortgage and title.

A will would be the obvious solution. So obvious, I wonder why there's even a question.

booksurr

make a will
nothing more need be said

p00hsticks

AdrianC wrote: »

A will would be the obvious solution. So obvious, I wonder why there's even a question.

A will's not going to help that much though if there's a massive mortgage on the property and the wife wouldn't be in a financial position to obtain a mortgage herself following the OP's death.

As well as a will, the OP needs to make sure that there's enough life insurance / savings left to enable the mortgage to be paid off, otherwise the house is going to have to be sold to meet the debt on his estate (i.e. his mortgage).

specialboy

Putting the property into joint names would help if the husband has to go into care I think.

Dan-Dan

Thanks all

The life insurance clears the mortgage upon death of either or critical illness

DaftyDuck

Then she can book the hitman...

Dan-Dan

DaftyDuck wrote: »

Then she can book the hitman...

I walk around in a chainmail suit most days mate

teddysmum

specialboy wrote: »

Putting the property into joint names would help if the husband has to go into care I think.

If a civil partner or spouse goes into care and the other partner continues to live there, the home is disregarded.


In another section, on here, I asked about the situation where the person going into care was the only one named on the deeds and was referred to the Age UK website, where it says that this makes no difference and the home would still be disregarded.