House buyer has moved stuff in before completion.

@AlinaRawlings Any update on this, did you speak with your Lawyer?

Hard agree. Especially rgds lawyers waving their qualifications in your face like cudgels.I hope you now have a lawyer as a shield.If you have to let it fall through do so. Just do not let her move in.

Let the sale fall through. It doesn't matter if she's allegedly a judge; coincidentally some of the sneakiest most hard faced people I've met work in the legal profession. You really need independent legal advice OP.

I think what you’ve said here is likely to be exactly right! He’s been very foolish in trying to appease a buyer to get a sale done ASAP without knowing anything about the buying and selling process, which was really stupid. I doubt if his solicitor knows what he’s agreed to because they certainly would have talked him out of doing that!

Like you say she has wanted an easy ride with moving. We wanted an easy ride with moving too last summer. We got all our light fittings sorted, did a bit of painting, moved our stuff over slowly before moving ourselves in so it was far less stressful and also meant we did not have the stress of a chain collapsing. In order to do that we bought a house and sold ours 1-2 months later, which meant we had an extortionate mortgage on the new house for that time, we’re paying two lots of bills. This cost us thousands of pounds to do. She’s trying to do the same at no cost to herself!!!

I hope you get the advice you need today!

When we last sold our house our buyer moved in before completion. However the EA set up a rental agreement to cover the period we moved out and completion. I wouldn’t have done it without this. We did it because they were from out of town and she was 9 and a half month pregnant and he was the new manager for a newly built supermarket which was opening in a month so it was a very specific set of circumstances. It was all set up very quickly they viewed the Thursday and rental agreement was sorted for the Saturday. She actually gave birth 3 days after moving into the house. The house never was listed as a rental in this situation. Maybe the EA arranged something like this? I agree with others though you need legal advice.

Reading this thread is making me feel sick for you. Forget 'I have no money for a solicitor' . You'll have nothing if you don't get a tough solicitor onto this first thing. And urgently call reliable friends and ask their help to get referrals to decent legal aid.. There are plenty of crap ones around who'll make this even worse..

Why don't you want to get her into trouble? If she'd said she were a window cleaner I doubt you'd have been so browbeaten into acquiescence. She absolutely needs reporting. Good luck.

Assuming you're in England, there are rules against judges misusing their authority/power in a private context - you can consider a complaint to the Judicial Conduct Investigations Office.

Also consider the possibility she was lying about being a judge - nobody would only sit in financial remedy cases and/or that she's a fee paid judge who works mostly as a solicitor/ barrister but is a judge for a certain number of days each year. If that's the case you also have the option of complaining to the professional body.

Hate to say it but I don't believe she is a judge. She keeps threatening to pull out of sale for a house she is already in. She can put off completion for months living there rent free. I find it odd that a judge would believe she can move in before completion, it is highly irregular. No one moves in before completion and money has been paid. Chances are she has already changed the locks. She gets the keys when your/his solicitor gets the money. Your solicitor should bollock her for bullying a disabled vulnerable woman and the estate agent.

Pleased to read your last update OP. Do keep coming back to let us know how things are progressing, as we're all here to help and support you in any way we can.

Good luck tomorrow.

Glad you are taking on board everyone's concerns
Good luck

Thanks for the updates, OP, especially the most recent one.

I still find it difficult to believe that this woman is a judge and I remain concerned for your vulnerability. So glad you are seeing your solicitor tomorrow! Please let us know how it goes

I've read op posts, but cannot understand why keys were given to the buyer before contract completed. That's standard for house buying in England??

Get her details, and if she is a judge, then she is acting without due respect? I can't think of the word, but she should be acting better...

Don't bother passing on information to your ex, the buyer etc.
Your priority is ensuring the order is on the house and you have confirmation any monies owing to you goes to you from conveyancing solicitors. No delays.

If your solicitor is busy on Monday, get another one.

Stop communicating with your ex and other buyers etc. Let their solicitor come to you direct in writing and do not rush when responding. Your solicitor will advise. You worry about you and the dc.

And don't be impressed by job titles.

Agree with this. Do they know each other? In fairness to buyer this mess between you and ex is not her problem, however her insistence on keys, moving in etc is . Neither is acting legally and despite you saying you have no money to fund a solicitor you stand to lose far more without one.

No. You never hand over the keys until completion, that comes after exchange.
Who gives a fuck if she's a judge? She could be fucking queen of England and I still wouldn't.

You need legal advice immediately. Not MN. Because it sounds very much like you've just had your marital home stolen from under you.

Ha! We had the opposite. Arrived after completion to find our completely unapologetic but tired looking sellers still in the house saying they hadn’t managed to remove everything yet as they ran out of time!! Luckily we were renting and hadn’t moved out so had somewhere to stay. I was 7 months pregnant at the time 😀

Wow this is awful op. Fingers crossed you get some decent advice tomorrow and get it sorted. If you have time please come back and update us. Many years ago we came back from a meal out the night before completion and saw our buyers had moved loads of their stuff into the garden. I thought this thread was going to be something like that.

Some more thoughts…

1. he said his solicitor said as I’m not his client then no it will have to go to my ex then to me this is completely wrong. If his solicitor did this then they would be in breach of a court order. As part of the conveyancing process, how the house is owned and why it is being sold is ascertained. In your case, they will know that it’s being sold due to a divorce so would ask if there’s a financial order. It is virtually impossible for them not to know the circumstances surrounding the sale. You are perfectly within your rights to contact them and “serve” them a copy of the court order so they have it and know about it. You may not be on the deeds or their client but you are a party to the proceedings. Anyone telling you they can’t tell you who his conveyancer is is basically stopping you from making them aware of a court order which is nonsense. You are a party to this transaction so you need to know who is acting on behalf of your EXDH so you can get your money (you’ll need to provide them with ID and bank details so get all of that sorted out well in advance. Ask them what they will need (in person or scans) and make sure you have everything sorted. If they’re not local to you ask them if they’ll accept certified copies and from whom).

2. A property is “sold” when the seller has received the funds on completion and the buyer receives the keys. You said the court order said you could stay in the property until it sold so you didn’t have to move out prior to the sale being agreed. It worked well for you to do so, but if he said you had to he was wrong. Again.

3. Exchange and completion are two different parts of the sale process. Usually, contracts are sent out at the start of the process and are signed by both sides. This has no legal effect and doesn’t create a contract. The buyer then carries out searches which can take 3 months or so to come back. They ask questions of the seller and might get inspections carried out on the property to see if there’s anything wrong, what restrictions there might be on ownership etc. They can still pull out as there’s no binding contract for them to purchase. Once they’re happy with the property both sides can exchange contracts (this is done by their conveyancers who get their explicit permission to do so. There’s set questions they have to ask to make sure everyone knows what’s happening as it has legal consequences). People usually exchange contracts with a completion date of 1 week later, but you can do a simultaneous completion where you exchange and complete on the same day.

Once you exchange, liability for the property transfer to the buyer so they have to get insurance to cover the period between exchange and completion in case the house goes on fire etc.

The seller owns the property until the sale is completed.

There is no binding contract until the parties have exchanged.

Letting someone carry out works to your property if you haven’t even exchanged contracts is completely reckless. If her electrician accidentally sets the house on fire and it burns to the ground then you will get no money. Highly unlikely an insurance company would pay out as your husband effectively allowed the activity to take place so would they’d say “Tough. Your fault”.

3. There may be argument that he is putting unfair risk on your share of the funds with what he’s doing but you would need a solicitor to get involved in that. There must be a legal principle that you can’t be reckless as to destruction/reduction in value of an asset that is subject of a court order.

4. Many solicitors will represent you on a contingency basis ie you don’t have money now but you’re guaranteed to get it in the future. You might be able to pay a deposit of a few £££ then pay the remainder when you receive the divorce settlement.

5. Stop speaking to judge lady. You don’t need to deal with any of her nonsense. Your part in this process is to move out at completion (which you’ve done) and be paid the money a court has ordered you get. That’s it. EXDH has to speak to the buyer, he has to exchange contracts, he has to agree dates, he has to give her the keys, he has to worry about her son losing his place at school, not you.

6. GET YOUR MATRIMONIAL HOME RIGHTS BACK ON THE LAND REGISTRY ASAFP!!!!!! You don’t need a solicitor to do it. DO IT TODAY!!!!

This crossed my mind, too.

He's definitely up to something. If she's buying it, is it conceivable that he's intending to bugger off with the proceeds of sale?

When a friend was in the process of a messy and vindictive divorce, she signed up to something with the land registry that would tell her if her (now) ex exchanged contracts on either of their properties.

You would be better off running the risk of losing the house sale than being shafted by a rental agreement or a squatter. You have been awarded the entire equity of the house - it’s most definitely in your interests to secure the house today. Or this could drag on for years and cost the earth in legal fees.

Change the locks now, and ask her to remove her things with immediate effect until the house sale is complete.

Seek urgent legal assistance at 9am tomorrow, you are being screwed over. You can quite possibly salvage this situation by being swift and securing your house.

Very odd that a woman should shout about being some sort of judge repeatedly, doesn’t ring true. And if she has any sort of legal knowledge she’d know you can’t move into a house until completion ( you don’t get keys at exchange of contracts, that just binds you to complete or lose your deposit) She’s squatting.
To me it looks set up by your ex husband.
The estate agent can contact the solicitor for information. The only Goid thing I can see is that Nov- March is time to complete although searches are notoriously slow especially now solicitors outsource them.
I hope it all works out.

Just a thought, whilst I understand his solicitor cannot act for you and the estate agents also a strongly worded email from you to them both explaining that you will be a beneficiary of the sale and you are extremely concerned about the antics of your ex and the 'judge', were they aware of them and if so you trust bearing in mind their good name they are advising their client of his inappropriate actions. Then final sentence you will be hearing from my solicitor shortly. So no actual request to act for you but rather pull their bloody fingers out and get this shit show back on track. ALSO urgent appt with solicitor as many have said.