trying to evict adult stepchild

[DionneEz]

This is my dilemma. The property is a marital home with my husband from whom I am now separated.

Before the separation, his adult son (21) was living with us. My husband has now left the property but insists that his adult son remain with me. This has been nearly 2 years.

At first I was accommodating, as my husband still pays half the mortgage, I pay all of the bills.

The stepson living here was not an issue at first, but now I can no longer cope as he basically stays indoors on his phone all day. The only time he comes out of his room is to collect his Ubereats.

I asked him about getting a job and contributing something financially towards the bills and I was given a story about how he was freelancing from home...and that his pay was intermittent.
However, I see the receipts for his Ubereats orders and they amount to about £20 daily, which is about £500 a month. When he does leave the house, he takes a £7 cab to the station when he can get the bus, which costs £2 or even walk as it is only 10 mins away...so clearly he has funds to splurge but he doesn't feel he has to contribute to the running of the house since his father owns half.

So the scenario is that I have a nearly 22-year-old man 24/7 in my house who refuses to lift a finger to do anything in terms of chores and doesn't contribute financially. I recently had to stop him using my toothpaste and bath soap because I was like you can buy your own surely.
I do go into the office 3 times a week and have errands and stuff to run on weekends but will come back to clean my house as this guy does absolutely nothing. When I was on hols for 3 weeks, he didn't even take the bins out. Yet his father insists that as he owns the house as well., he has every right to dictate who lives there. Is this true?

Anyway, I have given stepson notice even though he is not a tenant. The notice has now passed but he is still here and has no intention of leaving. I know the next step is to change the locks when he leaves which is rare but can his father come and let him in again and will I be breaking any laws if I lock the father out as well? Father doesn't live there and does not pay any bills..just half the mortgage but as the resident homeowner shouldn't my rights surpass his?

Also spoke to the bank today and they said I could look into a transfer of equity plus get a loan to buy him out. The problem is how much will he want in terms of the loan. The equity will be on my current mortgage rate. Any loan I take out will be on the current rate the banks offer

But is this going to cost you more than if you’d done it two years ago? I assume your home is now worth more.

Not paying, I meant, she doesn’t have to provide him electricity, heating and refrigeration.

You should have told to go to the library. You have to stick to your guns. I couldn’t imagine being in your situation and honestly, I wouldn’t feel safe with him in the home. That’s why I don’t understand why he’s still there. If you have circuit breakers you might be able to turn the electricity off in his part of the home. Take a look at the box tmrw and if the electrical goes you can just say that you have know idea bc your not an electrician. Also get a lock on the panel so he can’t break in to it and if he damages your property, well then, so long.

If there's no electricity in his room, won't that mean he'll use the other rooms in the house, the rooms that you use, e.g the living room? Surely you don't want him there?

In my fuse box, there are fuses for the circuit for upstairs light, and the circuit for upstairs sockets. There's no way to turn off power to just one room.

@DionneEz if you’re married can you not offset the equity stake he has in your property against the property he’s living in? If he owns or is buying that then you are also entitled to a share of that? Does his pension represent much more than your pension? Is there a way you can pool all marital assets and half mean he isn’t entitled to anything from the property you’re in? (Or less than the 40% anyway!
what he’s paying is probably less than he would have to pay for his son to rent somewhere! He’s laughing! Not only is he saving money by his son living with you, he’s also saving himself the hassle of his son living with him…. And controlling you in doing so because you can’t truly move on

I would definitely seek advice on your rights to kick his adult son out…. I isn’t legal for him to insist his son lives there. He may stop paying towards the mortgage … and I’m not sure legally whether you can ‘make him’ pay towards it as it’s different to a tenancy. I’m not even sure whether him stopping payment would mean he’s entitled to less, I don’t think it does….
I have a friend who split from her husband and she paid the. Orr have on her own for 10 years… she finally forced a divorce and court decided on finances as they (he) wouldn’t agree to a majority split favouring her….. court didn’t take into consideration that she’d paid majority of the mortgage term alone and only gave her 60%! Even though they’d BOTH paid for the first 5 years and her on her own for the last 10… plus raised 3 young children alone without financial support from him… I thought just going by how much she’d paid VS him she’d get at least 70%. Effectively she’d paid 12.5 years and him 2.5years.

She’s said she has a BTL in just her name so while she’s entitled to a share of any house just in his name, the same goes for his interest in the BTL property.

The two may well cancel out. Also, I think the OP said at one time that she was the higher earner which again suggests her pension may be more than his.

With the complicated finances / occupation issues, she needs a solicitor - which she has very sensibly said she is sorting this week.

Personally, I don’t think she should be trying to drive out her SS until after she’s spoken to the solicitor to confirm this won’t go against her in divorce proceedings but she is flatly refusing to take anyone’s advice on that point unless they agree with her, so there you go….

That’s because she technically owed him rent for the 10 years she lived in his half of the property.

The Family Court almost always say rent owed by the occupier and mortgage contributions owed by the non-occupier cancel out so the equity split ignores both.

If he had paid the mortgage for that 10 years, he would have got a lot more.

Switchboards and fuses can be done in different ways. Ours does have some degree of zoning. I can't single out a bedroom but I can leave only the kitchen sockets working for the fridge and turn of the rest of the house including the computer and wifi as they're on a different circuit.

Uh—look. Whatever the mumsnet hive mind thinks about OP—and its clear that a lot of commenters think she should just silently endure her abusive ex’s abuse by proxy—the fact of the matter is that as the Guardian has just noted 1/10 female murder victims are killed by their sons or grandsons. The adult stepson ticks several boxes for potential violence right now: living at home, fighting for resources, isolation, mental health issues. OP is in the line of fire for more coercive control and domestic violence. People here should stop encouraging her to fight with him and start encouraging her to escape this connection safely.

Absolutely. It’s coercive control by proxy and in actuality. The SS has had a good example set and he’s reproducing it.

No one thinks she should ‘silently endure’. Some of us just think finalising the divorce and getting the SS out legally makes more sense than falling for the obvious deliberate provocation set up by her ex and cutting off electricity / changing the locks without first taking legal advice.

Every post has said he needs to go - they are just split between the ‘chuck him out, you go girl’ types who are telling the OP what she wants to hear and those of us who are trying to explain that legally, it’s not that straightforward.

@DionneEz and will call up the solicitors to see about pushing the divorce through.

Did you speak to them? What did they say?

Only for actually the roof over head bit but the stepson has no right to any of the electricity, gas, water or to use any of the items in the property! It’s a shame you can’t physically stop him from using them other than switching boiler off if he is in shower etc and can’t put any of his food etc in the fridge as he pays no electricity etc, don’t let him use washing machine, any of your plates/cutlery etc. I would try to make it as awful as you can for him live there! Is he at least paying you the 25% council tax amount that you are losing not being eligible for single person discount?

A retired solicitor has said earlier on this post that this is not true and they are within their rights to throw out the SS

And several other people have posted that the so-called ‘retired solicitor’ is wrong and that their divorce lawyers have told them the opposite. Bearing in mind the ‘retired solicitor’ actually said the relevant law was the ‘Ways and Means Act’ (this isn’t actual legislation, it’s saying no law supports what I’m claiming but hey, you’ll probably get away with it so give it a go), it’s not advice I’d want to follow. That’s why the OP needs actual legal advice from a current solicitor who understands the law as it stands today before she does anything.

I’d be delighted if someone can point to either legislation or case law that allows the OP to remove her SS without a court order but despite me asking several times, in 27 pages no one has posted any.

Edited to say: Also, ‘ways and means’ is police slang for doing something an officer doesn’t have the power to do or using a legal power improperly. It’s used at worst when someone can’t legally do something but thinks with a bit of lying / bending the law, they can get away with it and at best to mean trickery. So I wouldn’t assume the ‘retired solicitor’ is saying it’s legal to just sling out the SS, she might just mean that she thinks the OP could get away with it! It’s an odd phrase to use otherwise.

www.reddit.com/r/policeuk/comments/edq2r3/what_does_ways_and_means_mean/

I do think that’s it’s all rather sad. This boy/man lived with OP and his dad since he was 9, apart from ages 17-19 I think. So she was there for most of his childhood, and it’s ended like this.

Once she gets proper legal advice (like posters have been saying since the very first reply) they will probably not see each other again.

I'm the retired solicitor you keep crossing swords with. Do not appreciate the insinuation that I don’t know what I am talking about. The OP needs to get out of this situation asap. Trembling before a law that will never be upheld is one of the many ways that women carry on being abused and intimidated by men. No court would ever sanction this state of affairs. The SS does NOT have a right to live in the house unapproved of by the occupier. He certainly does not have a right to use all the facilities without paying for them. The OP should not be getting into a situation where she is looking at cutting off electrical sockets, it’s a recipe for more coercion and possibly violence. Can you imagine letting this young man into a house where he knows his SM has deprived him of basics? It won’t make him leave, it is likely to provoke him ! To keep herself safe, she needs to lock him out of the house so the problem then becomes his father’s! If that means the father then stops paying his bit of the mortgage then so be it. At least she is safe. If he doesn’t and the matter goes to court, this will take a while and in the meantime the OP can still be safe. I have seen many women seriously injured and a couple of them killed by putting up with this sort of abuse. It needs to stop. Now.

I didn’t insinuate anything.

I specifically said you don’t know what you are talking about.

You say yourself ‘trembling before a law that will not be upheld’. Are you now admitting the law exists, then?

I absolutely agree the OP needs to get the SS out. There are clear legal means of doing this that the OP needs to follow. I am boggled that a solicitor chooses to tell someone to not follow the law.

Your ex isn't legally obliged to pay half (or any of) the mortgage just because he owns part of the house. He can choose to stop paying and then you'd be liable for the full mortgage payment and if you didn't pay it, the mortgage would go into arrears, affecting both your credit ratings.

If you can't afford to buy out his 40% then you should take steps to market and sell the house in order to give ex his share and get your own place as sole owner. The stepson is a red herring.

@DionneEz as to this "I wouldn't want to sell now as I have a really good mortgage rate at 2% which ends in 2027. If I sell and buy again, I wouldn't get the same deal. ", you can port your mortgage or part of it to a new property. Nearly all lenders permit this.

I am saying, the OP needs to be safe first. let the abusive ex enforce the law, if he doesn’t like what she is doing. You are ignoring the abuse both these men are perpetrating . What legal qualifications do you have ?

While I agree, the marital finances seem to be complex and it may be the OP is better not doing anything until the divorce is done and a financial order is in place. If she buys a place in her own name before the divorce, while it sorts out the problem of the stepson living with her, that house still gets taken into account in the eventual financial settlement.

@CandidHedgehog I agree. Had missed the fact that they're married. In fact that makes the OP in a worse position and she's wrong to hold onto the believe that she "owns" 60% because of the tenants in common ownership. All of their joint assets are joint marital assets for division on the basis of need in the divorce. The ex may be entitled to 50% (starting assumption), or more. She needs a lawyer and to get on with having a mediation or applying for a financial order