Mesher orders and mortgage

[Silvertongue212]

My husband and I are divorcing. We want to enter into a mesher type arrangement where he owns a percentage of our home but can't force a sale until our children are adults. He is a high earner and has already bought another property which will be suitable for the children.

The issue is that my husband doesn't particularly want to remain on my mortgage long term. I can afford to take over our mortgage on my own. However, our mortgage broker seems to think that no bank will let me do this while the property is jointly owned - i.e. if both our names are on the property title ex husband will have to be on the mortgage too.

I'm a bit confused by this as it seems like it's quite standard for mesher orders to include wording about the spouse staying in the home using best endeavours to get the other spouse removed from the mortgage and this doesn't make sense if no bank would allow this while there's a mesher arrangement in place.

Does anyone have experience of this?

Following with interest as I'm in the same position.

Also been looking into this.
isn’t there another type of order where (as long as your income allows - could include maintenance) you take over the mortgage, house gets transferred into your sole name but there is a charge on the property for a debt to him. Can either be a fixed amount, but more usually agreed percentage of value or equity
charge becomes payable at various trigger points - remarriage, death, youngest child’s age/completing education.

Meaner orders can take various forms. But as a pp says what you want is form where he retains an interest in the property. Which isn’t that unusual, although there are reason why a lender won’t like that. However people retain interest in property all the time. Speak to a solicitor and then work with a more experienced broker. Always remember it is far far better for you to buy out his interest asap.

Thanks for your responses. We’d be happy with the legal charge option too but broker suggested that it would also be near impossible to remortgage with a second charge in place.

I thought it was quite common for married couples to buy together but only one to go on mortgage e.g if one party had bad credit so don’t really see why the mesher is such an issue.

We can release some equity now to partially buy ex husband out and then he’d need another 70k or so from the house at some point. I’ve thought about selling but have two young children and can’t face the logistics and am in an area with very low housing stock. Plus I’d be moving from somewhere worth 600k to about 500k which doesn’t save much money month to month and I would probably lose 15k in moving costs.

I’m going to speak to some banks and maybe another broker and will report back if they tell me anything useful.

What about your current mortgage provider allowing the transfer? Then a 2nd charge on the property for whatever you agree with STBXH?