DESPERATE HELP!!! Mortgage, House, Restrictions and Mrs Ex

Hey guys

Me and my soon to be wife are in need of some help.

In 2005 she brought a flat with her ex partner. he got himself in to some bad debt and he went to court due to non payment of a large loan. the courts then moved it from a unsecured loan to a secured loan against the property in 2009 and he would pay a set amount to a solicitor. so its like an IVA/payment plan sort of thing..... They later split up and he left the property. They signed a notice of severance where it states that the loan would be paid by him and nothing to do with her. The mortgage will be paid by her and he has waived his rights to equity that the property builds but she kept the flat and living in it till present day.

I moved in with her 5 years ago and we have happily lived in the flat that they had together but i obviously pay half the mortgage, bills, etc like it was my own flat, even though she says it is my home as much as it is hers in her eyes...bless her :-) She tried to change the mortgage into just her name or even both of ours but the mortgage company said that if she did this then the loan would be transferred to her to pay?? so we were like ermmm, don't think so!!! We are now due to be married and next year we are looking at moving and getting a house and raise a family. However this is where the problems have arisen......

We were getting letters from her ex-partners solicitors start/middle of last year to get in contact about checking up on his finances and see if he can afford anymore towards the loan. we tried to get in touch with him but he stopped returning calls, Facebook messages etc. he has completely dropped off the face of the earth and we can't get hold of him. His parents who lived locally have also split up and gone there separate ways so we have no way of contacting him. We started looking in to the fact that we would be moving and would this loan may have an effect on the sale/equity of the property as this would be our deposit for a bigger house.

I ran a Land Registry check today and found that there is a Restriction from 2009 on the land register. This is to do with this loan. She has tried to talk to the solicitor involved who the loan is against but they won't speak to her as its not her debt/account, its his. So we can't even find out if its been paid or not?? we have looked into applying to have it removed but we have no evidence that its been paid off.

We have read that if a restriction is on the land register we can still sell as its not a full Charging Order due to the property being jointly owned and nothing to do with us, it then gets void when the solicitor notifies the creditor upon sale. Would this be the case??

If its not, please if anyone knows what we can do would be a massive help. We are due to see a solicitor about it as well to see where we stand. but we don't want to sell the flat if it means we would be forced to pay his loan off with the equity that we will get and he gets away with it and we are left with the bill and can't afford our family home.

Sorry its a bit long winded guys but any help would be great

Cheers