She doesn't want to sell the flat!

Samyusuf_3

Thank you all kindly for your thoughts on this matter. I am making some progress and will be sure to update the thread in the weeks ahead so that it may benefit others in a similar predicament.

Samyusuf_3

No progress I'm afraid and back to square one. She's just not playing ball.

I have sought the advice of a solicitor and his response filled me with little hope that the courts would allow a force of sale considering my daughter.

So instead of filling solicitors pockets with thousands of pounds for no gain I've decided to stop paying the mortgage and have now taken my name off all bills and won't pay a penny towards anything to do with the property.

I'm currently living with my friend.

I know this will destroy my credit history (and hers) and the flat will eventually be repossessed and sold by the mortgage lender but I really don't care anymore.

If she wants to act ignorant and go out of her way to make my life difficult and miserable then I'm not going to take it lying down.

Of course I hope she does come to her senses and agrees to go to mediation. At least that way we get something instead of having the flat repossessed.

I even told her that if we sell the flat I would help her find a flat to rent and would give her money towards the rent as well as the child maintenance, and would always buy my daughter whatever she needs separate from the child maintenance.

I just can't believe my luck.

SamYusuf

Hi All,

I lost access to the original email account I had setup to start this thread hence why I had to create a new account.

I'm sad to say that things have taken a turn for the worse since I resolved the issue with my partner and moved back in again around June 2018.

I genuinely made a lot of effort to make this relationship work, but unfortunately within a few months the relationship turned sour again and there was a complete breakdown in communication.

We practically lived separate lives living in separate rooms and generally did our best to raise our daughter and support her and only communicated with each other when necessary. It became a very strange relationship and really affected me mentally although I had no choice but to put on a straight face and just carry on as normal. She on the other hand didn't take it so well and would often bring it up and it would usually end up in an argument.

Fast forward to late 2019 when an argument broke out and she stabbed me with a pair of scissors. She herself called the police after the attack and they arrested her and took her away.

As I did not press charges they released her the following day.

To cut a long story short I had full custody of my daughter for the last two months allowing my ex partner only supervised visits with our daughter as dictated by the social services.

The social services carried out a full investigation into her mental well-being and initially had concerns hence the supervised visits, but the end result was that she is not mentally ill and does not pose a threat to our daughter.

However, I'm 100% convinced that she does suffer from some form of mental health issue although I don't believe she is a threat to our child. She has siblings who definitely show signs of mental health issues, possibly bipolar.

I'm living with my family and she continues to reside in our flat and we are currently sharing custody of our child 70/30 in her favour as she works part time and I work full time.

We are both paying the mortgage 50/50 for the time being.

We had mediation regarding the flat where she made it clear that she does not wish to sell the property and demanded that I continue to pay half of the mortgage even though I'm not living there. The mediator did make it clear to her that as we are not married I'm under no obligation to pay and warned that a court case would be financial suicide for both parties.

I spoke to the lender, Santander, and they assessed my financial standing and told me that I could just about take on the mortgage on my own and buy my ex partners share, although they would need to carry out a full assessment which has to be done in a branch.

On her current part time salary, my ex has no chance of taking on the mortgage let alone buy my share.

I have sought legal advice and have a solicitor ready to take action this week as we were delayed due to mediation. Now that I have the form from the mediator to say that we were unable to reach an agreement and mediation failed, my solicitor can take action.

My solicitor advised that as we are not married this will not end up in the family courts and will instead be tried in a civil court.

He reckons that the most likely outcome would be a forced sale of the property as she is unable to take on the mortgage on her own and buy me out.

He too warned that it would be financial suicide if it were to end up in court as the legal/court fees could amount anything upto £30k, however, if I win the case then my ex would be liable to cover my legal fees and vice versa.

I don't believe my ex has the money to appoint a decent solicitor and would definitely not be able to maintain the fees required to see it all the way to court.

I'm hoping against hope that she does seek legal advice of her own and sees sense and agrees to cooperate and sell up.

I think her family and friends are all advising her to just stay put and telling her that she would get the flat as she has a child and has nowhere to go.

I thought I'd update this thread as I'm sure it would be of some help to others who may be in a similar situation as me or, god forbid, end up in a similar situation.

If anyone has any advice/suggestions then please do share and I will continue to update this thread untill the matter is resolved.

Best regards

[Deleted User]

Thanks for the update.  Things with your (non)wife certainly appear to have deteriorated and it is absolutely abhorrent that she stabbed you.

There's a posted called Missymoo2 who went through the process of forcing the sale of a property jointly owned with an alcoholic ex.  It cost her 10k and took 5 years with the judge awarding all costs to come out of the ex's share of the equity for being such a knob about the whole thing.
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6090824/forcing-sale
To help keep costs down you could probably do quite a bit of the leg work yourself rather than engaging a solicitor to do everything.
https://www.slatergordon.co.uk/media/2347003/land-disputes-a-guide-to-procedure.pdf?awc=17097_1581313632_bc562529c37d0ef60c932b4fc003c263&utm_source=Affiliates&utm_medium=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.skimlinks.com&utm_campaign=181013&aw_pid=181013

onwards&upwards

My only advice is, don’t try to diagnose mental health issues unless you are a qualified psychiatrist.

Malthusian

Lover_of_Lycra said:

To help keep costs down you could probably do quite a bit of the leg work yourself rather than engaging a solicitor to do everything.

I'd be cautious of that given that if the ex ends up stuck with the legal costs, there is no benefit to the OP DIYing anything. Even if they share the legal costs he will still be doing legal work for the ex for free.

And I echo onwards&upwards' comment. You do not have to be mentally ill to stab someone - not if you are fully aware of the consequences of your actions. The OP should stick to the facts and avoid speculating about her mental health to his solicitors or anyone else. Accusing a woman of being mentally ill when they're not is known as gaslighting. It's an understandable error when someone has stabbed you with a pair of scissors, but being the victim of a stabbing is not a good reason to make unforced errors.

SamYusuf

Lycra, thanks for the links, sad to hear what Missymoo went through, but sounds like she's now in a much better place.

I'm actually of the same mindset as she was, I honestly don't care about the money, I just want to cut ties with my ex and be free of her.

She and her family know that as long as the property is left in limbo with me paying half of the mortgage there's a good chance that I will return home and everything will be ok again. They know that if the property gets sold then this whole relationship is over for good. I know it sounds crazy, but believe me that's how these people are and I have never quite met any other family like them.

Not forgetting that this is her second failed relationship and she will now be walking with a label on her head and will find it incredibly difficult to find another partner. It's difficult enough finding a partner after a first divorce let alone a second one and with a child. 

She will never apologise for what she has done, but I can bet everything I have that if and when the court decides to issue a force sale of the property she will turn on the waterworks and will start using her trademark emotional damsel in distress routine. I've become so accustomed to it by now that I actually pity her.

I know this is how they feel because I feel the same, it's like the whole relationship cannot fully end until the property is sold.

I appreciate I'm not a doctor or a psychiatrist, but believe me I have lived with her for a good few years now and hand on heart I can tell you that she is not of sound mind, she used to suffer from depression when we were first getting to know each other and was an emotional wreck, her attention spam is zero and she cannot hold a decent conversation to save her life. I'm the mug for feeling sorry for her and that's basically what's got me into this mess.

Although I said it's not about the money, I'm not just going to let her get 50/50 and will fight for every penny especially after what she has put me and my poor daughter through.

Today my daughter should have had both parents fussing over her and raising her with love and care, instead here I am a broken man without my daughter near me. I sit here wondering how she is, what she's doing, is she eating well, does she miss me. This is not what I intended for my daughter, which father does, but my conscience is clear as I know I have done more than most other guys in my situation would have to make this relationship work for her sake, but that wasn't really doing her any good either.

I just can't get used to this, it's so painful.

Anyway, back to the here and now, there's probably about £100k equity if we sell the property right now, but of course the legal fees will eat into a good portion of that if this does end up in court.

The title is held as tenants in common in equal shares, as I did not have a declaration of trust drawn up, which in hindsight I should have done as I paid double the deposit as what she paid and then on top of that I have spent another £25k of my own money in home improvements. This money I had to borrow from family and friends which I still haven't paid off so I'm in debt.

[Deleted User]

Have you spoken to an organisation such as Man Kind for support?  The system is seriously flawed if someone can stab their partner and still end up with custody of the child(ren). 

https://www.mankind.org.uk/

onwards&upwards

Lover_of_Lycra said:

Have you spoken to an organisation such as Man Kind for support?  The system is seriously flawed if someone can stab their partner and still end up with custody of the child(ren). 

https://www.mankind.org.uk/

Sounds like the OP made that decision for convenience due to his working hours, a court didn’t. 

SamYusuf

Hi Lycra, Onwards&Upwards,

No, I have not sought any advise from mankind, I've never heard of them, and to be honest not sure how they'd be able to help, unless I'm just being very ignorant? You think I should I call them?

When she was arrested, I was contact by the regional social services manager who questioned why the heck I wasn't pressing changes, my response was that because she is still the mother of my child.

As the case was assigned to another social services manager, she contacted me and made me aware that the ex was very rude to her and was making demands such as to return our daughter to her custody, and when told that was not going to happen, she then made threats to this manager on the phone saying she will make a formal complaint.

That obviously didn't go down very well with the social services and they just made life even harder for her. Even when the police came to arrest her, she was denying that she stabbed me and claimed that I did it to myself. She was was acting very frantic with the officers and was demanding a lady officer, it didn't take them long to realise who was the troublemaker and they forcefully escorted her out of the property despite me telling them to not arrest her. They told me under no circumstances were they going to leave me and our child with her in the property.

I was then taken to hospital and my two sisters had to pack all mine and my daughters essentials and drop off to my parents. I have not returned to my property since.

And that was not the first time she tried to stab me, a few months back she grabbed the kitchen knife waving it about during an argument, but she never came at me as I was able to talk her out of it and calmed her down.

As for custody of our child, we discussed this in Mediation and we are both managing it ourselves for now. As I work full time, it would be very difficult to look after her, and my mum and dad do their best, but I feel it's best she's with her mother when I'm not around. My two sisters are also in and out due to flexible jobs so they also help out.

Just to add, my solicitor told me that as she was arrested and there is a police record of the incident, she is very unlikely to qualify for legal aid. I'm really not clear on how legal aid works and what the requirements are, but I'm hoping she doesn't qualify so she would have to spend her own money on legal fees, and more than anything else in this world, she hates spending money unless of course it's someone else's money.