Should we borrow more to pay off legal aid bill ?

clanger66

Hi everyone, I’m in the process of remortgaging so that my ex husbands name is removed from the mortgage and my new husbands name is added. I have a legal aid bill from my divorce in 2011 and this is approximately 18k now, it’s charged at 8% interest a year currently on a daily rate. My question is would it be better to borrow extra money on the new mortgage to pay this off ? Currently we have a fixed rate of 1.4% until November this year and under this could afford to do so however  i am a bit concerned about how much interest rates are going to go up after this. We are going to apply for another fixed rate but we’ve been told we can’t do this until the change of borrower has been sorted out. Thank you in advance for your help 

ACG

You can do a further advance with your current lender. 
Add your husband and do a transfer of equity (the legal process of adding your husband) all at the same time. 

I would have remortgages ages ago, 8% compared to around 2%... I would have even done an unsecured loan as rates would likely have been less. 

clanger66

ACG said:

You can do a further advance with your current lender. 
Add your husband and do a transfer of equity (the legal process of adding your husband) all at the same time. 

I would have remortgages ages ago, 8% compared to around 2%... I would have even done an unsecured loan as rates would likely have been less. 

Hi, thank you very much for your advice. We weren’t able to remortgage until recently as my husband had a poor credit rating due to a default and then partial settlement of a credit card. I’ve just spoken to Santander our lender today and they have told me that they won’t lend us money to pay off the legal aid bill as it’s seen as debt consolidation and they don’t do this at present. I was very surprised. We are tied in to a fixed rate until November so I’m guessing we could look elsewhere then, or as you say look at a loan.