Ex put no deposit down and paid no monthly payments

DE_612183

roundgrapes_98 said:

Hoenir said:

roundgrapes_98 said:

I live in a small 2 bed house and want to be able to get a bigger house so my daughters can have their own room but I feel like i wont be able to do that with the large amount she is wanting to take from me

Your ex is paying the appropriate level of child maintenance? 

I pay her £100 a month and any other child needs like classes or new shoes, new passport etc...

You said you have 2 children to look after - I presume they are yours for a different relationship and yo0u have one from the relationship with the woman who's claiming £20k?

can you give all the facts about the situation it will get you much better advice.

roundgrapes_98

DE_612183 said:

roundgrapes_98 said:

Hoenir said:

roundgrapes_98 said:

I live in a small 2 bed house and want to be able to get a bigger house so my daughters can have their own room but I feel like i wont be able to do that with the large amount she is wanting to take from me

Your ex is paying the appropriate level of child maintenance? 

I pay her £100 a month and any other child needs like classes or new shoes, new passport etc...

You said you have 2 children to look after - I presume they are yours for a different relationship and yo0u have one from the relationship with the woman who's claiming £20k?

can you give all the facts about the situation it will get you much better advice.

Yes I have 2 children, one with the ex I got the house with and another child from previously. 

saajan_12

roundgrapes_98 said:

silvercar said:

If the property is held as joint tenants, you both need to sign to sell. How much equity was in the property when you bought and how much is there now?

Bought for £177k could sell now for around £220k so not a massive amount 

roundgrapes_98 said:

I can remember off the top of my head what the equity was in the begging but there is currently £88k worth in equity at the moment

From these two statements, sounds like you probably put in ~20k deposit, have paid off ~20k capital during the mortgage payments, and it increased in value by another ~40k, getting to ~80k current equity, very roughly. 

* Any mortgage payments during that 1st year are effectively joint, as that's how you jointly split up the household, while she was providing childcare. Arguably some of the deposit you saved up while renting together could also be seen the same way. 

* The payments you made towards interest are just your living cost, which is generally cheaper than rent, and which was possible due to both your names being on the mortgage that long. She's also used up her FTB status on your home. So its reasonable that she gets a part of the uplift or profit due to her name being tied to your home. 

The 20k requested is effectively 1/2 of the uplift, touching none of the actual contributions you made. Or its 1/4 of the overall equity. Overall sounds like a reasonable result. 
If you can't negotiate something, then ultimately you'd have to force a sale in court, which will probably cost as much just in costs. I would bite her hand off. 

silvercar

I would think that £20k for her to sign everything necessary for you to sell isn't totally unreasonable.

I wonder if she realises, I certainly wouldn’t let her know at this point, she could have a CGT liability. Having owned half the property for 8 years and only lived in it for 1 year, she would be subject to CGT on 6.25/8 of half the gain (less buying and selling costs) If there was an increase of 40k, rough calculations would be at least £1,300 bill.

ian1246

OP, your playing dangerously with fire.

You really should have paid attention when you brought your house - you had 2 choices: Tenants in Common, which would split the property based on each of you owning a % (thus protecting your deposit!), or Joint Tenants, which would be joint-ownership, effectively 50% each.

You chose Joint Tenants and it is now too late to change that. 

No amount of moral arguments, as suggested in this thread - changes that legal position. That is what your up against - for it to change, the court would have to adjust it, which means satisfying a judge that the original agreement entered into was either Fraudulent or otherwise there was a dis-balance of power between the parties or some other reason to satisfy them the original agreement cannot stand.

You contributing 100% of the original deposit is Utterly irrelevant as an basis for retrospectively changing the agreement - you knew that you were contributing 100% of the deposit at the time you entered into the agreement and still went ahead with it. The court will absolutely disregard that as an excuse to tear up the existing legal agreement.

You paying 100% of the mortgage for the last 7 years? You might have an argument to make there - except from what your telling us, she isn't trying to claim any of the additional equity accumulated from those mortgage payments, but merely what sounds like 50% of the uplift in the property value in which she's been an owner of it.

Its worth noting that there is absolutely a legal basis for you to be paying her rent for sole use of the property. In such a circumstance, I would argue you paying 100% of the mortgage (including her share) would off-set any requirement to also pay that to her - but on the flipside, there would be an argument to be raised by her solicitor that your paying 100% of the mortgage was instead of paying occupation rent to her, meaning she would have a claim on the additional equity built up from your mortgage payments.

Can the departing party charge the remaining party rent on their home? | Manor Law

You'll note the case law cited there, whereby occupation-rent can potentially be disregarded if the remaining party retains custody of the child? Unfortunately for you, if your paying her child-maintenance, legally your not the resident parent. So its worth baring that in mind as well when considering Occupation-Rent vs. Mortgage payments.

This all comes back to my original point: You should have paid attention to the significance of that Joint-Tenant agreement. She is absolutely the legal owner to 50% of your property and has a solid basis on which to claim 50% of the existing equity - including the share you've accumulated by paying the mortgage (which offsets the Occupation rent you owe her).

In addition, she'll rightly be able to argue that whilst you've benefitted from use of the house and the financial leverage her still being listed on the mortgage gives you (Would you have passed affordability checks on the property had you re-mortgaged to buy her out?), she herself won't have been able to get a mortgage elsewhere for a property of her own - thus preventing her from getting her own property and benefitting from the uplift in market prices - hence a further reason why her asking for 50% of the uplift in market value.

I don't mean to sound harsh, but its really important someone tries to argue her potential legal point of view to you.

That £20,000 offer? I'd bite her hand off - since if you refuse it, your probably facing a costly legal battle and a very real prospect that she'll succeed in claiming 50% of the total equity accumulated (You contributing 100% of the Deposit - utterly irrelevant, that factor existed when you entered into the joint-tenant agreement. You paying 100% of the mortgage? Merely offsets her claim against you to occupation rent, meaning she can still make a claim on the equity accumulated via mortgage payments) 

Certainly take some legal advice on the above, but from where I'm sitting £20,000 - effectively 25% of the accumulated equity - sounds like a perfectly reasonable and proportionate offer. You have to accept she absolutely will be walking out of the property with a significant sum of money, its just a question of how much.

What you absolutely do NOT want to happen is her to seek legal advice, whereby her solicitor will no doubt raise a lot of the same points as me above - that's then when she comes back asking for a lot more and your then facing a very real prospect of spending 10's of £1000's in legal fee's or paying her £40,000+