Helping daughter to stay in her home through her divorce

TBagpuss

There may be options.

For instance:

You and your partner could raise funds by remortgaging your home, and then give or lend money to your daughter to let her buy out her ex. You'd prebaby want it to be  loan to her secured by way of a second charge over her property, and she'd need to be able to get a mortgage in her sole name to clear the current one and take her ex's name off it .

Your partner could see if he and his daughter could get a joint mortgage to pay off her ex - however, if your partner currently owns another property then this would have implications - extra stamp duty, CGT etc. 

Courts generally prefer to achieve a clean break so would normally look at an arrangement where the house is sold or transferred with one partner buying out the other, however, they can make an order for this to be deferred - so if daughter has been a SAHP or working part time but expects to move back to full time work in the near future, a court might be open to making an order giving her a bot loner to get her ex off the mortgage and to pay him out - so if she expects to be working full time and bale to remortgage in (say) 2 years time she could think about proposals along those lines. 

You mention £10K - I assume that this is 50% of the equity, however bear in mind 50/50 is only the starting point - if he is a higher earner then it may be fair for her to have a larger proportion of the equity , so her looking at what she could borrow in her own right (including looking at mortgages over a longer period than the existing one) is something she should be doing. She should also look into what she will be entitle to in terms of child support if the toddler will be living with her, as that's relevant to her mortgage capacity. IF there are other assets such a any pensions that may also affect how they split the equity. Similarly, f as a single person she is eligible to claim Universal Credit that may affect both whether she can afford the current mortage and outgoings in the short term, and may be taken into account in looking at her borrowing capacity.