I am planning to move in with DP. He owns his house, has a small mortgage, an erratic income and monthly maintenance payments for his two DC. I earn much more but have no property or other assets. We intend to stay in his current house for six months to a year, then buy somewhere together.
Once we buy, we'll just each pay whatever share of the mortgage seems appropriate to our incomes, but we're trying to work out the most equitable way to manage our finances in the period when I'm living at his house. The options we've considered are:
- I pay him half the mortgage as rent
- I pay bills and living expenses, he continues to pay the mortgage
- I pay for the work that needs to be done on the house to bring the eventual selling cost up (mostly superficial, but it could do with a new kitchen and bathroom and the garden is a catastrophe)
- I pay nothing and save up to give us a bigger deposit when we buy a place of our own
We're both equally happy with all of these options, but I want to make sure that the existing equity in his house is ring-fenced as his (because his DC should inherit it one day; my mother's father's money and property all went to her stepmother when he died, and I don't want to be the person who does that to my DSC) and that I'm not leaving myself financially wide open if things go tits up in the future. Any thoughts? Have we missed an obvious answer?