Can I leave and rent elsewhere whilst H pays the small mortgage on house we are trying to sell?

[HangerLaneGyratorySystem]

I want to leave the house we own (small mortgage c. £500 a month) and rent a house elsewhere for myself and my 2 adult children. We all want to get out of the house as H is verbally abusive - we've been on the market a few months with no interest and its just dragging on. Not done D81 but the divorce can now go to final order if we wanted.

My question is I thought it was fairly normal for one partner to leave the other in the house - to physically separate if they can afford it - rather than have to live together till its sold. I know in many cases it would be the man leaving but as I say H is abusive and knows he can manipulate us if we are all trapped here together. We are both working, both have pensions in payment too, he earns more than me. I'd have to pay around £1.3k a month to get a rental, as I understand it the person remaining in the house then pays the mortgage so he should be in a much better position. However, seen a few threads recently with people saying no, the person who leaves will still have to actually pay the mortgage AND their own rent on top.

I'm not asking if I remain legally responsible for the mortgage as I know I do, I'm specifically asking about him just paying it on his own for a few months whilst we try to sell and I rent elsewhere. Not sure if thats clear - any ideas/experience?

Well if you can agree that then no issue surely

Like a PP said - either your STBX agrees to it or he doesn't.

What does he say?

Well yes you are legally responsible but as I've found out the hard way, if you move out and stop paying it, there is very little he can do about it.

Technically you should pay your half of the rent, but you could offset that against him paying you rent for the use of your half

You just need ti agree between you

Can you not get an occupation order? Do you have adult children only?

Moving forward are you buying a new house or renting anyways?

There are a few Facebook groups that will help you out with recommendations for where to get free legal advice

Are you responsible for half the mortgage though? If your name is on it you probably are, so you need to clarify that first. If he is abusive, I doubt he will make things easy for you by paying your share.

Sorry, my post doesn't make sense, I meant to say that you should probably speak to the mortgage provider and /or a solicitor.

You are probably both liable for the whole mortgage payment, so if you leave and he only pays half you’ll both face repossession - it’s normally jointly responsible because there’s only one house to repossess if that makes sense. You’ll just have to come to some agreement with him.

This isn't legal advice whatsoever but a friend of mine was in a similar position. She spoke directly to her mortgage lender about it and the advice was that if he (or she) didn't pay it in full, they'd have to apply for repossession. They asked if the house was likely to sell soon because repossession would take a long time anyway. Almost encouraging her to say yes so they knew not to bother with repossession in the few months it might take to sell.

The problem was her ex refusing to accept reasonable offers, he was convinced the house was worth 50k more (it wasn't a big house, about 250k, I think, so the difference was significant). They ended up going down the repossession route. She couldn't get a decent mortgage with anyone else after that but when she went back to her original lender, who had records of the situation, they were happy to treat her as a normal applicant. I'd have to double check but I think it was nationwide.