Tenants in common or joint?!

pookiebear12

Me & my fiance have just exchanged on a house together and it will be the first property I have owned.

He bought the home we are moving out of 5 years ago, we have both lived in it for those 5 years, I contribute a % towards the mortgage and I cover food costs, most household chores etc. We also now have 2 young children (4 & 1). 

We have just been sent forms by our solicitor to fill in to decide if we are wanting to buy our new house as 'tenants in common' or 'joint tenants'. My partner thinks we should go 'tenants in common' in case we were ever to split up, so he would receive all the equity from the house we're currently in because it's 'his' home. A friend of mine has advised I looked into this more as apparently I have some rights to the equity despite not being married yet, as I have contributed to the mortgage, bills, childcare and overall running of the home etc etc. Is this true?? 

Keep_pedalling

Tenants in common would only lead to an uneven split in equity if you also had a deed of trust in place defining the individual ownership drawn up. The default is a 50/50 split.

Apart from the ability to define an uneven split in ownership the main difference between the two methods of ownership is that with TIC each share is inheritable rather than passing by survivorship, so if you do go down this route it is pretty important that you both make wills. If you don’t and one of you dies, because you are not married, you your share would be inherited by your children, which would be a nightmare for the surviving partner as half the house would have to be put in trust.

Beeblebr0x

https://www.gov.uk/joint-property-ownership

On a related note, my wife and I had a solicitor change the ownership of our house from Joint Tenants to Tenants in Common, which was quite cheap to do. The reason for the change is we wanted to leave our respective shares upon death to our daughter instead of to each other. 

One thing to note - if you state in your Will that you wish to pass your share to, say, your offspring, but the ownership of the property is still held as Joint Tenants, Joint Tenancy trumps the provisions in your Will, so it is essential to have it changed.

elsien

pookiebear12 said:

Me & my fiance have just exchanged on a house together and it will be the first property I have owned.

He bought the home we are moving out of 5 years ago, we have both lived in it for those 5 years, I contribute a % towards the mortgage and I cover food costs, most household chores etc. We also now have 2 young children (4 & 1). 

We have just been sent forms by our solicitor to fill in to decide if we are wanting to buy our new house as 'tenants in common' or 'joint tenants'. My partner thinks we should go 'tenants in common' in case we were ever to split up, so he would receive all the equity from the house we're currently in because it's 'his' home. A friend of mine has advised I looked into this more as apparently I have some rights to the equity despite not being married yet, as I have contributed to the mortgage, bills, childcare and overall running of the home etc etc. Is this true?? 

Well that’s certainly an interesting take on it. What is his view on how you and the children would be housed if you do break up?

Will you be named on the mortgage for the new property? 

I’m not sure how much household chores and childcare come into it because that’s a different issue but how  much of a percentage have you been paying towards the mortgage and have you put any other money towards bigger maintenance or home improvements?