Employer about to cost us our mortgage.

adzuturn

Hi all,

So, after a long struggle me and my wife have our mortgage in principle. I am self employed and have only been for the past year and a half and she has 2 part time jobs. Needless to say it has been difficult to find a lender and jump all of the hoops.

The final piece of the puzzle (as far as our lender is concerned) is a letter from my wife's larger of 2 employers. Her company was taken over around 2 months ago, and the new employers have not produced a contract for her to agree and sign (most probably because they know she will want to renegotiate her horrendous current one). So, they are honouring the contract she had with the previous owner of the company.

The bank need a letter from them to confirm that they are honouring the old contract, and despite good notice and numerous requests from ourselves and our mortgage broker they keep failing to deliver, inspite of how serious we have impressed on them that this is. The bank have given us an ultimatum now which is closing rapidly.

What I want to know, is, if my wife's employer costs us this mortgage (which we believe could be one of the only lenders for us with my work circumstances, and something we have put a lot of time into and would cost us money) what can we do about it. Is there anything we can use legally to "motivate" them into producing this 1 sentence letter? Are they under any legal obligation to produce documents required by employees for such occasions as this? We are not interested in taking them to court, we just would like our mortgage we have worked so hard to get, b this mortgage is important for a number of personal reasons that move beyond just getting a better interest rate than the one i currently have on my own, and this could potentially cause a lot of problems for us if it falls through.

Please excuse any areas in which I am naive, lacking knowledge, or am seemingly motivated by emotion as opposed to cool calculation.

Many thanks people of the internet.

LeafGreen

I think I'd go for pester power - keep chasing for the letter (in the nicest possible way) until they get it sorted.

ACG

You can not force your employer to do smoething unless it is a legal requirement (which in this case it is not) or it is part of their contract (which I doubt it will be).

Is the company a relatively small one?

If so, why not ask if you can type out the letter yourself, print it on letter headed paper and take it to the manager/owner/HR person to sign - it will take them 30 seconds then. It sounds like a strange request because legally, they have to honour the original contract under TUPE laws so it is a given that your contract will remain the same. Why not ask the broker to go and fight your corner if they have not already?

Thrugelmir

adzuturn wrote: »

So, they are honouring the contract she had with the previous owner of the company.

The new employer is bound by TUPE. No change is neccessary to contractual terms. They simply roll over.

Rather than increase costs. You'd expect the new employer to be looking at rationalising and reducing costs. To justify the take over.

The new employer has no obligations with regards to you obtaining a mortgage. As none of their business,

jonnygee2

It sounds like the company is likely to restructure and that, as of yet, they haven't made a decision as to whether your wife's job will remain.

Perhaps the bank is right this time, and this is not a secure or stable time for you, and that getting a mortgage right now is actually not a good idea?

campbell19925

If it's that important to you to get them to sign this letter I suggest you go into work with your wife and demand to speak to someone about it. You'll get to the bottom of it then.