To feel protective of my house

[ThisMintHouse]

Early 40s F. Getting married next year to wonderful, kind and generous man also early 40s. We have a child each from previous relationships and an ours baby now 1yo.
I bought a house 7 years ago and have just over 100k left on the mortgage. I've paid off about 50k. He's interested in contributing and making it our home. I'm feeling a bit scared about this as my home is a haven and I don't want to lose it. However, I also want to respect and trust my relationship. He doesn't have any property but he has a decent job and good earning potential.

YANBU: A house is a majorly important asset. Protect what was yours before the marriage.

YABU: Marriage includes combining assets and trusting one another. Jump in and trust in the process.

They have a kid together, now isn't the time to play at being selfish and uncommitted. To be that cold and hard means there is no love or relationship.

And yet I have met hundreds of men who have done exactly that. They have no qualms in being considered cold. It’s just women that are cold when we want to protect the roof over our children’s heads, including the joint child.

You do realise that one of those kids is hers! You talk like her own baby owes her debt of gratitude because she allows it to live with her! She can't become all "me me me" and begrudge giving a penny of anything to her partner and kids! Its her duty to house the child she chose to give birth to

Neither partner should be cold or calleous! Otherwise the relationship is shit and needs ending.

It’s not warm or loving to handover everything that you’ve worked for for the last 20 years to somebody who may or may not remain in your life for the next 20 years
We really do need to knock this narrative on the head.

There's doesn't feel like much love or commitment here! You can't expect the guy to never want a place that's theres too, somewhere to pay a mortgage on, they want bricks and mortar too! You either end the relationship because there's no warmth or commitment between two people, or you sell up and buy a place together and treat each other with respect and as equals. It's not fair to tell him that he's never allowed to own anything.

Feel a bit for this bloke, ex wife took all money from his house in divorce, new wife wants to maintain independence?

If i were him i would agree for you to keep house, but would refuse to contribute to the mortgage and instead save the moeny up to have my own safety net.

He could put the surplus income into his pension which outperforms the property market and has better tax benefits for him anyway

What you forget is if they split up the baby will have as much right to be housed by its father as its mother and that will be at the expense of the OP’s first child.
The courts will order her to sell her house to give him his share, Which effectively means that either they are both stuck renting.
Or baby gets a new house with its dad because mummy will no doubt be doing the majority of the childcare, but Dad will be entitled to an equal proportion of the house because he will need to House baby every other weekend.
No doubt mum will pay for the childcare which child support never covers even 50% of.

It just dilute the equity/security for the OP’s first child.
Where as the current situation secures the roof for both children.

No but you can't expect a partner to sit with no ownership of anything, you sell up and invest together! You don't sit there and tell that partner that they are not allowed to have anything of their own and they are not welcome to be part of anything of theirs. That's a relationship with no future. It's also wrong to have a child with somebody and then begrudge any legal connection to them, like others have said, there's a child involved and you can't be self absorbed once you bring a kid into the equation.

There's very few adults that don't want to have any home of their own and live with a toxic partner that forever reminds him that everything is hers! She loves herself more than she loves her kids! They could get joint mortgage and lovely family home but she isn't interested in selling up doing that, so if she dies the baby has a father that's homeless and living one income and her kid will never have the home it could have had. This relationship is doomed anyway!

My advice to you would be to not get married.
My advice to him would be to buy his own property.
How you do those two things while living as a family is the challenge you both have to work out. One solution would be to live in his new house and rent yours out. Another would be to live in your house and he buys a rental property.
As you both know, divorces do happen. If you get married and you split up, you could end up with only half the equity of a house and unable to buy another.

Protect your assets. Positive intentions and trust won’t keep the roof over your head if you get a divorce and he is able to take half of it. You need to put yourself and your children first.

This will cause issues down the line because in normal relationships and home ownership, things like renovations, extensions, redecorating or even just buying new three piece suites etc happen, how do you work that when there's a toxic imbalance? Will the OP let him have a say in these things? Will she expect him to financially contribute despite wanting him at arms length of having any ownership!

What if she loses her job! Will she suddenly want him to suddenly stump up for the mortgage payments and bills?

Why unused?
He had a house we lived in. I had a holiday home abroad which I was renting out. And, as my experience showed, running two separate houses was the right thing to do because, when the relationship ended, there was nothing to divide. We set it up from the start so that we both benefitted from the financial setup despite both being committed to the relationship. Until one of us wasn't... which does happen and not something you can predict no matter what your intentions may be.

A holiday home is one thing but I'm taking about people having two separate houses here in the UK just because one person won't commit. Holiday homes are pretty controversial these days because of the impact to locals.

And I am not sure why you are bringing any of these issues to me because at no point myself or OP talked about living in two separate households.

Get him to contribute the same as you have and then keep it equal going forward. You can't protect the house if you are marrying him anyway so you should aim to be equal contributors so if it goes wrong it's easy to split again.

You talked about yourself and your partner as two separate entities buying properties and that you didn't want to both contribute to the same mortgage. Your comment wasn't overly clear to understand.

Which is why most of us who have been divorced are in no hurry to do it again particularly while the children are under 18

If I make a stupid decision, it’s only me that suffers the consequences. It should not be the OP’s older child or indeed the baby that ends up with an unstable childhood as a result of poor decision-making that we see over and over again on this board.

If you get married and then split the assumption will be 50/50 of everything.

But they will suffer because she isn't willing to share a joint, secure home with their father, they won't have more bedroom and garden space to play in because mum won't get a joint mortgage with dad und utilise two incomes. There'll be arguments and resentment because the partner will always feel like a lodger who is excluded from being part of anything, it makes life hell everytime the house needs something or redecorating or new boiler etc. Will he get a say in anything, will he be asked to contribute! It's a long term problematic arrangement. What happens if she suffers redundancy? Will she expect husband to stump up the mortgage payments and bills!

So it’s about weighing up risk versus benefit
They either stay as they are with zero risk or they potentially improve their situation with enormous risk
Anybody who’s being a single parent previously will tell you which one is worthwhile

Exactly. After my divorce I have promised myself that I will never get married again. I need to know that my house is mine regardless. It's not only divorce that is a risk, I see so many threads on here where husbands have gambled away fortunes and put the family home at risk, or just fritted away money on useless things. By the time they are discovered so much money has been lost already and it's too late to turn things around.

The marriage part is irrelevant, I'm not married to my partner but we have a shared house which we jointly own and pay for. The OP needs to decide if she's really wanting this relationship or not because she's gonna break it, it's not going to work in the long term and I've painstakingly explained why such as what happens when the house needs things, things break and need redecorating or if she loses a job - will she still be "it's all mine mine mine" or will she begging him for money! He isn't going to sit around being treated like that forever because it's not normal. She brought a baby into the equation who will not have a home if anything happens to her.

Protect your assets.

My SIL didn’t. She married the most wonderul, kind man 10 years ago. Only, he wasn’t wonderful and kind for long after they were married.

He’s currently dragging her though court and she’ll probably lose a lot.

Everyone told her not to get married. She owned a house, had two children and was 41. She wouldn’t listen.