My rights as a mum of 3

[Katiefrost]

I'm separated from my partner of 20 years. We are not married. We have 3 children together which i will be keeping with me. I want to be able to buy my ex out of the mortgage. As we are not married will it be a 50/50 split of the assets or because I'm keeping the kids and need the house would i get a bigger %. I got a 43% discount from the council towards the house and my parents are still owed £30000 as they helped us with buying the house. I also puy £10000 of inheritance towards it.

Some of it will depend on what you can prove in terms of who owns what, and how long ago. Do you have anything in writing?

What do you mean by you’re ‘keeping’ the kids with you? How often will they see their dad?

There's no split of assets at all as you're not married. The only question is the house - how do you own it? As tenants in common or joint tennants?

You need legal advise. Is there a loan agreement with your parents? If it was gifted and you are joint tenants or tenants in common 50/50 then the £30000 will likely be split between you equally.

Whose name is the house in? If joint as tenants in common or joint? Was your contribution ring fenced?

You have no right to a bigger share of the house and nor should you assume that your parents contribute or the money you put in from your inheritance are ringfenced. This would only be the case if you bought as tenants in common with different %’s of ownership.

There is no split of assets
what’s his is his and yours is yours
if you own your house as joint tenants that has 50% ownership each
if you own as tenants in common it’s 50:50 unless you agreed to own on unequal shares of which the split would now be that

you’d be due child maintenance based on number of nights the kids are with you and his earnings

Contribution*

Technically that’s not quite correct. If they’re joint tenants then they both own the whole of the property, though in the event of a split the default position is likely to be 50-50.

Who paid what is not relevant - only how the shares are held

other than this you’d have to rely on TOLATA law to try to claim more I believe

Yes under joint tenancy you both have equal rights to the whole property but my point was really people usually agree this in the case where they specify set shares /%. But unless this is done it will default to 50:50 ( as far as aware £

I’m not an expert but I don’t think you can buy him out of the mortgage, you would need to get a new mortgage based on just your income and buy him out of his share of the house.

Unless you legally agreed something else you own the house jointly, so the split from any sale would be 50:50.

The council discount is therefore meaningless. It just means you got it cheap and will both make a profit.

The inheritance cannot be recovered unless you ringfenced it.

The loan from your parents is something they need to address. Do they have anything to substantiate this loan? Was it declared as a loan when you got the mortgage and bought the house? Or was it declared as a gift.

They might have to take action to recover it now you are no longer a couple. Whilst you would of course give them back your £15k your ex might not agree it was a loan.

Also if you brought your council home and plan to sell it within 10 years you must offer the council the property back first as you will owe them a percentage of the sale.