Disappeared ex-fiance

[BycullahRoad]

Asking for a friend. She owns a flat jointly with her ex-fiance, a foreign national, who left England a year ago and has now basically disappeared. She is blocked on all social media etc. and he must have changed his number as no one has been able to get in touch with him for several months now.

She is still single, she has been paying the mortgage with great difficulty, and is now trying to remortgage the flat at a better interest rate to make the payments more affordable.

The remortgage has been approved and is going through, but the conveyancing solicitor has now asked for her ex-fiance's signature on a land registry document. However she has no way of getting in touch with him to get his signature. Solicitor has said the remortgage cannot proceed without this document being signed.

Has anyone encountered this situation before and how did they get out of it? Thanks in advance.

Can someone else (who isn't likely to be blocked) search for him on social media? Failing that hire an enquiry agent (a UK one will be able to advise on where to start with another country). That might take several weeks to track him down and then serve him with the correspondence she wants to draw to his attention. I think she should be asking for him to sign the house over particularly if he's not paid much in. She could apply to court for an order and the judge can then sign off if granted but she must show she has used best endeavours to contact him and seek a voluntary transfer. He needs to be got off those deeds! Otherwise he could turn up in 25 years and demand 50%

Yes I am a facebook friend of his, there have been no posts for several months. He was last heard of on a island in the Caribbean. He's probably just fine but sometimes you fear the worst.

Yes the documents are to take him off the deeds to allow the re-mortgage to proceed. The solicitor works for the mortgage company so you can't ask "what if" questions. Just wondered if anyone had any experience of anything similar.