Cohabiting

FBaby

Fireflyaway wrote: »

If you earn the same and are sharing the same house and bills it makes sense to me to split it equally. The way I see it is its probably cheaper than him renting elsewhere and if the house is mortgaged, you are sort of renting it off the bank. Its not as if you are personally pocketing his rent. He sounds ungrateful.

She is gaining from an investment that he is contributing towards. That's the problem with property, it is both an essential need (rent) and an investment (growing in value), unfortunately, seen to depreciate sometimes on the short/medium term, but so far always considered the safest investment.

So on one hand, why shouldn't he be paying half for having a roof over his head. On the other hand, why should he be paying so that she can pocket the profit!

No right or wrong, as said before, it comes down to commitment. At which point do you move from 50/50 in being fair, to 50/50 out being fairest.

pollyanna24

I still don't get why someone should live for free while someone else has to pay.

Surely if it is less than he would be paying by renting, he should be grateful.

Maybe the answer is to rent out the house, earn income from that and just rent another house together, but split the rent. Or would this be unfair too?

indiepanda

This is a tricky one. I had a boyfriend live with me for about six months some 13 years ago. He had his own house which he rented out for more than the mortgage so he had an investment that he was making money on, while I carried on paying the mortgage on my place and all he paid was half the monthly bills and half the food costs. Oh, and he refused to pay towards the cleaner on the grounds if we didn't have one I would do all the cleaning as I would be the one to crack first long before he cleaned (I know... there was a sign there, right?).

Net result of this arrangement was that I earned 50% more than him but we had the same disposable income and he was benefiting from the housing market going up in the same way as I was. I can't see that this was really fair and it definitely felt like he was profiting from the situation much more than I was but it has to be said when we split it and he moved out meant there were no discussions to be had about whether I owed him a penny.

If I had someone live with me again, I think I would take a similar approach - I know I can bounce back from heartbreak but the idea of losing my home because someone had built up a beneficial interest and I couldn't afford to buy them out terrifies me.

Maybe the OP needs to detail out exactly how much each bill is and show him he is only paying half. If it is more than half then she needs to think hard about whether she wants to risk the boyfriend building up a beneficial interest.

I have to admit, I think it would be fair to pay a little bit more than the bills as the boyfriend is also getting benefit from the situation by paying rather less than a market rate of rent for the space he is getting, but then again a lot of bills don't double just because you are sharing, so even him paying half the bills benefits the OP.

Poor_Single_lady

Putting aside the legalities and entitlements just for a second.

If 2 people are in a relationship And love each other then I would hope that the boyfriend would want to contribute fairly. Surely if you love somebody and you are living together then you would want to put in more than £250 per month. I know personally this wouldn't sit right on my conscious if I was the one moving in.

It just Seams a bit of a mean approach to. A Relationship.
Surely at the point of living together you either go in 100% together or you call it a day. I know I couldn't be happy payiny this amount and resentment would not be too far away.

Comms69

Forget there’s a mortgage- imagine she owns it outright- would it be fair to charge your partner rent?

bugslet

Comms69 wrote: »

Just to be clear, that was just the opinion of the solicitor.... You never actually did the whole court thing



Sometimes it's not about the money won, but the money lost by the other side.


If I issued court papers and you didn't have a clue, you may go to a solicitor, who would charge you £200 to file a defence.


I simply withdraw my claim (total cost so far is around £35) and you are left £200 down. You cannot reclaim that from me.

Indeed, well worth 200 quid for peace of mind in my book. .

Plush

This is what I would do if I were in your shoes... For as long as you two keep finances separately, I would ask him to contribute exactly 50% of all housing expenses - mortgage payments and all utilities and services, including council tax. I would not ask him to contribute to repairs or improvements though.

It's a fair deal for both of you - you both pay much less than you would if you lived separately. Now, if you're feeling particularly generous and loving, you could ask him to only pay half of the interest portion of the mortgage (exclude capital repayments), plus utilities and services. If you have access to your mortgage online, you can figure out very easily how much interest you are paying.

In my case for instance mortgage payments are about £1000 monthly, but interest is only £400. Utilities and all services are about £300 (council tax included). So I would ask him to contribute £1300/2 = £650 or, in the "me being generous" scenario he would contribute £700/2 = £350. That £650 would be much much cheaper than what he would pay on this own.

If, at some point in the relationship, we decided to go to the "next level" and have joint accounts and stop tracking 'who buys what' then we'd have a discussion about how to change things from that point on.

Good luck with that discussion...

bugslet

Comms69 wrote: »

Forget there’s a mortgage- imagine she owns it outright- would it be fair to charge your partner rent?

In that scenario you'd hope they would split utilities and council tax. I certainly don't get why anyone would charge a love interest rent.

Plush

bugslet wrote: »

In that scenario you'd hope they would split utilities and council tax. I certainly don't get why anyone would charge a love interest rent.

If I moved in with my boyfriend and he owned his place outright I would offer to pay for all utilities and council tax and be thankful that I can live rent free. We are all different I guess...

-taff

If he's moning about it, he's more than wlecome to buy his own place and you can go and live with him and pay 250 while you rent yours out.