Gifted property rights

Bigcod

Approx 4 years ago I gifted around £100,000.00 to my daughter reducing the cost of a house I owned to enable her and her partner to purchase the property.
She had fallen pregnant, he had asked her to marry so they were engaged and obviously a baby on the way so I saw no need to go through any legal route to ascertain the gift was for my daughter ( the house been previously purchased 10 years previously as a long term investment for my daughters benefit)
All parties were fully aware that this was the case and were agreeable to it.
Since the child was born her partner has continually cheated, has used steroids and cocaine and has recently left her for another woman, he is demanding the sale of the property and wants her and his toddler son out of the house.
My question is legally can he benefit from the £100,000.00 that was gifted to my daughter, he has broken his contract of engagement as well as morally behaved disgustingly.
Would i have any recourse to take him to court to stop or challenge his demands ?
I would like to recoup the money to further assist my daughter in purchasing her own property moving forwards.
Thank you in advance for any constructive comments.

da_rule

It’s going to be somewhat difficult if there is no paper trail showing your intentions at the time of making the gift.

Just to confirm, do they own the property as joint tenants or tenants in common? If it’s tenants in common, is there a deed of trust or any other document that shows that the ownership is not split 50/50?

Bigcod

They took out a mortgage as joint tenants, but it was noted at the time that I was gifting the difference in purchase price to market value thus enabling them to raise the mortgage.

da_rule

Unfortunately, even as you’ve worded it there, the gift was to enable “them” to get the mortgage.

If there is no evidence (even text messages or emails) to show that you only intended the gift to be to your daughter then you have got something of a struggle on your hands.

The only saving grace is that a court is highly unlikely to order your daughter to leave/sell the property. Especially having regard to his conduct and her current situation. A bigger issue may be whether she can afford to meet the mortgage payments if he stops paying.

getmore4less

How big was you CGT bill?

They took out a mortgage as joint tenants, but it was noted at the time that I was gifting the difference in purchase price to market value thus enabling them to raise the mortgage

That would be an indicator that this was a joint gift.

Even if it was clear that your gift was to your daughter it becomes hers outright and by purchasing as joint tenants with nothing in place that would be looked at as she considered her assets as joint(ie. she gifted 1/2 to him)

If you has wanted the gift to be just your daughter and protected you should have encouraged her to protect the money through trust deed and TIC ownership.

AdrianC

Bigcod wrote: »

Approx 4 years ago I gifted around £100,000.00 to my daughter reducing the cost of a house I owned to enable her and her partner to purchase the property.

Bigcod wrote: »

They took out a mortgage as joint tenants

No, they didn't "take out a mortgage as joint tenants" - they own the house as joint tenants. They jointly own the entire house, not discrete shares. They could take out a joint mortgage if they were tenants-in-common, too. The ownership type doesn't affect the mortgage. The mortgage doesn't affect how any equity from a sale is distributed, except that the mortgage needs paying off before any equity can be distributed.

The fact that she contributed a £100k deposit is neither here nor there - it could have been if they owned it as tenants-in-common.

The fact that you gave her the £100k deposit, rather than her obtaining it from other sources, is neither here nor there - it was a gift. If there were reservations to that gift, such as being able to claw it back at some point in the future, then it would be a loan not a gift.

My question is legally can he benefit from the £100,000.00 that was gifted to my daughter

He has been doing since the day you gifted it.

he has broken his contract of engagement

Do you have a copy of that signed contract...? What clauses in it relate to this situation?

as well as morally behaved disgustingly.

Then she'd be better off without him.

Would i have any recourse to take him to court to stop or challenge his demands ?

No.
This current situation has a big fat zero to do with you, legally or financially.
You made a gift to somebody, a competent adult. It's their money.
You are not a part-owner of the house. You used to own it, but then you sold it to somebody else.
The fact those two "somebody elses" are the same person, a close family member, is irrelevant for these purposes.

I would like to recoup the money to further assist my daughter in purchasing her own property moving forwards.

Then you should have made sure you had a charge against the property for the value of the loan you gave your daughter. But, of course, a loaned deposit makes mortgages much more difficult than a gifted one...

Will you think I'm being harsh here? Yes.
Will you take offence at that? Possibly.
But that is the truth of the legal and financial situation. Sugar-coating it in a hug won't change that. Obviously, there's a third dimension - the emotional one. And that's a very big deal for you and her. But that doesn't change the legal or financial dimensions one iota.

Your daughter is a grown adult, free to make her own mistakes in life. If you wish to shelter her from the consequences of them, then you and she need to plan for them in advance, rather than trying to do something without thinking through the possible consequences first. If that means that some options become more complicated, then that's part of the reality of the situation.

How the distribution of joint assets will vary, given that there are child maintenance considerations, is another question for another part of the forum.

BTW, I trust you'd been doing all the landlord stuff by the book while they were your tenants, and you paid the appropriate CGT at the time of disposing of the asset?

bouicca21

Mesher orders are increasingly avoided by the courts as they simply delay the financial pain. It’s a short marriage and there is a minor child involved, I doubt any court will give him half. They will expect her to make efforts to get back into the workplace if she is currently unemployed. And don’t forget that other assets are taken into account too - savings, pension pots, etc. If e.g. he has a decent pension scheme she could offset the house split against foregoing rights to a future pension.

Get your DD to sit down and make a list of all assets and their respective incomes. Get her over to wikivorce. When she has a better idea of assets try to find a solicitor who will give an initial half hour free. Make sure you find one who does family law; solicitors not experienced in family law can make fundamental errors.

agrinnall

bouicca21 wrote: »

It’s a short marriage...

We still have no idea if there is a marriage at all, we only know that there was an engagement, and the OP refers to him as the daughter's partner, so there may never have been a wedding.

bouicca21

agrinnall wrote: »

We still have no idea if there is a marriage at all, we only know that there was an engagement, and the OP refers to him as the daughter's partner, so there may never have been a wedding.

Oops, right. The existence or not of a marriage is crucial.

AnotherJoe

Not that i could forsee my son in law doing this but this is why i went down the route of a open ended loan to my daughter with no payback required until the house is sold, and a charge against the house to secure it.

martindow

AnotherJoe wrote: »

Not that i could forsee my son in law doing this but this is why i went down the route of a open ended loan to my daughter with no payback required until the house is sold, and a charge against the house to secure it.

That's all well and good but a mortgage company is likely to see a gift and a loan very differently. A gift reduces the LTV ratio whereas a loan doesn't. It can make the difference between being offered a mortgage or being refused.