Mortgage in my name - living with girlfriend

diego_94

Starting point would be to split utility bills and council tax 50/50.

She can use any spare cash to save up, and then in the future if things are going well, you can use this money towards a bigger house? Just an idea.

Arsenal2019

lisyloo said:

What myself and my husband do (normal married couple) for bills is that we each put an equal amount into a joint bank account to cover energy, water, tv licence, food, council tax.
I have an excel spreadsheet where I have the totals by year and a budget for this year (so we know what the right figure is).
we find this useful as its entirely equal and also separates the household expenditure from our personal accounts.
It's not hard to keep records e.g. 2 water bills a year.

You could do something like that.

Hi
Thank you 
yes  I did the exact same in my previous relationship and you’re right it did work well… but with that we both contributed towards the deposit for the house whereas this time around it’s just myself.

Albermarle

MToon said:

Albermarle said:

My girlfriend isn’t interested in going on the mortgage

This statement is what stood out for me.

I could understand if you both wanted to see how living together worked out for say 6 months, before making a more joint mortgage arrangement. But it seems like she is not interested in helping with the mortgage long term, even if things go well, which seems a bit odd.

Apologises I should clarify this - she’s not interested in going on the mortgage at this stage and isn’t in a position too either due to only just having finished uni - she’s paying off her student overdraft and buying a new car etc which I’m fine with.  Given I’ve got 3 years left to run on the mortgage I hadn’t planned on making any changes before that anyway.  If things were going well at that point when my re-mortgage is due I’m sure she would want to be added at that point and it’s something we’ve talked about. 

Be aware that if you get married and/or have kids, all bets are off regarding whose paid the mortgage etc

Emmia

MToon said:

Thank you, this is what I was thinking - the only issue is things like my gas / electric are on a smart metre so vary every month as I just pay the amount used. So I couldn’t say for certain what the cost would be each month (an average maybe?).  Problem is I think if I went to a solicitor to get something drawn up they’d just recommend a full cohabitation agreement.

Presumably you would like to protect your investment in the current property, until say the end of your current mortgage fix? If you want to emphasise to your girlfriend that the property is yours, and that whilst you'd be delighted to share with her, she has no claim on the equity in the property... then I would get a formal cohabitation agreement drawn up. 

I'd also avoid any financial contributions to the mortgage or home improvements from her, and pay the mortgage out of an account solely in your name

If the agreement costs you a few hundred, what is that as a percentage of the property value / your equity in the property?

In a few years time, if its all working out, then you can get her added to the mortgage and tear up the agreement. 

sevenhills

MToon said:

As mentioned above we’ve both agreed that she contributes half of the bills and food shop etc, but nothing towards the mortgage or elements that may increase the value of the property etc.

Would it be fair/better to get her to pay for all the food bills and then no rent etc?

ThisIsWeird

Hi MToon.

Your house is yours, and your girlfriend is your girlfriend. You pay the mortgage, and things remain like that until the relationship - as I hope it will - progresses. Once you are married, the 'issue' is resolved.

All 'living' bills - council tax, energy, food, broadband, etc - should be split pretty much 50:50. These are 'consumables', and the money spent vaporises, just as it would if you were living separately.

By not paying for rent, your girlfriend will hopefully be able to save something each month, and she should be sensible enough to accumulate a sum to help her move on should your relationship not work out, or - hopefully - as a nice nest-egg for your joint future. (If she, instead, starts to spend her new monthly windfall on ostentatious trinkets, then that's her decision - but you will have learned something important about her...)

The house remains yours in every respect, as it should until you 'share' it with marriage. Your living bills will pretty much halve, so you will be better off. That's a 'win-win' for you. Your girlfriend's living bills will also be pretty much half of what they'd be if she were living on her own, and she will be saving a whopping amount on rent too, so that's a 'win-win' for her, too.

No need for any contract. Yes, it should be discussed, so no-one is left wondering, and both parties understand and appreciate the fairness and logic and benefit to both.

Your girlfriend will not have any right to any share in your house, morally or legally. In the extremely unlikely event she should try if, say, you split up acrimoniously, then you can demonstrate very simply from your bank statements that your mortgage payments continued unaffected from the day she moved in, and also that no payments were made from her to you that could be considered 'rent' or a contribution towards this.

It probably makes sense to open a joint account and call it 'Bills', and use this for your everyday living expenses. It would also simplify things if you paid all your shared household bills - council, water, energy, BB, etc - from this, and the statements will show that you both contribute ~50% to this account each month, and that is its sole purpose. But only use this account for your joint, shared, near-equal, living expenses. Do not take any payment from this account towards your mortgage. You can either try and balance your equal contributions (by Standing Order, I guess) into this new joint account so that it pretty much matches all the regular bills that come out, so that no major surplus is built up, or you can allow an accumulation that you can use for joint expenditures - holidays, days and nights out, etc.

Other than these living, sharing, bills, keep your own accounts separate. You should both be better off.

Good luck - oh to be young and have such first-world problems... :-)

I'm pretty sure that's all you need to do.

FlyMeSomewhere79

My partner and I never married and never wanted kids, we have been together 21 years this year and we share everything equally, we pay half each for our travelling which is our hobby and we are both on our mortgage and we share the cost of our home.

Initially I wasn't on the mortgage in our early years due to credit rating issues caused by my ex partner but my current partner had no desire to keep me cut out of things - you have to think about the future, if god forbid something happens to you, your girlfriend will automatically be homeless because she was never allowed to be legally part of the property.   

Also a person I used to know had a partner that had commitment issues, never wanted to sell up their individual homes and get one together - it made for a relationship that got increasingly volatile as the years went on because the person I knew felt more and more upset that he wasn't willing to build any kind of future with her. 

Less and less people bother with marriage these days as it's becoming outdated, what that does mean is that there becomes more of an onus to take care of each other legally to stop a partner going through additional hell on top of a bereavement. 

Emmia

FlyMeSomewhere79 said:

My partner and I never married and never wanted kids, we have been together 21 years this year and we share everything equally, we pay half each for our travelling which is our hobby and we are both on our mortgage and we share the cost of our home.

Initially I wasn't on the mortgage in our early years due to credit rating issues caused by my ex partner but my current partner had no desire to keep me cut out of things - you have to think about the future, if god forbid something happens to you, your girlfriend will automatically be homeless because she was never allowed to be legally part of the property.   

Also a person I used to know had a partner that had commitment issues, never wanted to sell up their individual homes and get one together - it made for a relationship that got increasingly volatile as the years went on because the person I knew felt more and more upset that he wasn't willing to build any kind of future with her. 

Less and less people bother with marriage these days as it's becoming outdated, what that does mean is that there becomes more of an onus to take care of each other legally to stop a partner going through additional hell on top of a bereavement. 

The easiest way to take care of someone legally though, is getting married or entering into civil partnership.

FlyMeSomewhere79

Emmia said:

FlyMeSomewhere79 said:

My partner and I never married and never wanted kids, we have been together 21 years this year and we share everything equally, we pay half each for our travelling which is our hobby and we are both on our mortgage and we share the cost of our home.

Initially I wasn't on the mortgage in our early years due to credit rating issues caused by my ex partner but my current partner had no desire to keep me cut out of things - you have to think about the future, if god forbid something happens to you, your girlfriend will automatically be homeless because she was never allowed to be legally part of the property.   

Also a person I used to know had a partner that had commitment issues, never wanted to sell up their individual homes and get one together - it made for a relationship that got increasingly volatile as the years went on because the person I knew felt more and more upset that he wasn't willing to build any kind of future with her. 

Less and less people bother with marriage these days as it's becoming outdated, what that does mean is that there becomes more of an onus to take care of each other legally to stop a partner going through additional hell on top of a bereavement. 

The easiest way to take care of someone legally though, is getting married or entering into civil partnership.

Not really, it's about names being on mortgages, pension beneficiaries, wills being written.

Not everyone wants a religious ceremony and marriage doesn't necessarily help if your name isn't officially against anything. My mum and dad were married for about 50 years by the time he died but she still went through a lot of difficulties because many things were not in her name and she had no access to all.his online accounts etc because she's just not internet savvy.

Emmia

FlyMeSomewhere79 said:

Emmia said:

FlyMeSomewhere79 said:

My partner and I never married and never wanted kids, we have been together 21 years this year and we share everything equally, we pay half each for our travelling which is our hobby and we are both on our mortgage and we share the cost of our home.

Initially I wasn't on the mortgage in our early years due to credit rating issues caused by my ex partner but my current partner had no desire to keep me cut out of things - you have to think about the future, if god forbid something happens to you, your girlfriend will automatically be homeless because she was never allowed to be legally part of the property.   

Also a person I used to know had a partner that had commitment issues, never wanted to sell up their individual homes and get one together - it made for a relationship that got increasingly volatile as the years went on because the person I knew felt more and more upset that he wasn't willing to build any kind of future with her. 

Less and less people bother with marriage these days as it's becoming outdated, what that does mean is that there becomes more of an onus to take care of each other legally to stop a partner going through additional hell on top of a bereavement. 

The easiest way to take care of someone legally though, is getting married or entering into civil partnership.

Not really, it's about names being on mortgages, pension beneficiaries, wills being written.

Not everyone wants a religious ceremony and marriage doesn't necessarily help if your name isn't officially against anything. My mum and dad were married for about 50 years by the time he died but she still went through a lot of difficulties because many things were not in her name and she had no access to all.his online accounts etc because she's just not internet savvy.

But it saves having to pay IHT upfront and makes inheritance under intestacy rules (if there is no will) pretty automatic. 

Your mum's issues would have been worse if they'd not been married. 

Marriage doesn't have to be religious, I had a civil ceremony where mentions of religion are banned, similarly a civil partnership isn't religious.