Morgage and rent payments

[Simba80]

I have a Morgage with a previous partner who still lives in the house which still has a joint Morgage on. I don't pay towards the Morgage now but I did for five years while I lived there. He now rents out two of the bedrooms and gets £400 a month for them each. Am I entitled to any of this money?

I think they have to buy you out of the mortgage and take your name off it, as if he stopped paying you would be liable. Maybe best to get some advice x

Why have you kept the mortgage on the property in joint names? Surely it would be best if you came off of it?!

Yes I've been trying to get him to take me of/but me out but no one will let him remortgage on his own 😐 So it's just stayed the way it is.

Thankyou creasey31 I think I will seek advice on this one as in an ideal world I would like to be removed from it. X

You need to work out exactly what percentage of the house you actually own. That will depend how much you contributed to the initial deposit, how much you put into repayments, and what the increase in value was between when you bought and when you stopped contributing. That will help you work out the value if your slice when you stopped repaying. You will continue to own that proportion of the property until it is sold and you get your slice of the value back.

Meanwhile you also need to work out what proportion of this rent is for the physical space and what proportion is for bills, tv/phone access etc. You are entitled to a slice of the former but not the latter.

However rather than claiming a slice of the income now, you might be better off getting your ex to agree that your share of that rental income is going towards incrementally increasing the slice of the property value that you own.

Are there any kids living in this property? If not you can quite easily get a court order to force a sale of the property to get your money back.

From a tax perspective if you own the house 50:50 then HMRC would expect you to be paying tax on 50% of the rental income.

The children don't live at the property but they go there about once a month for the weekend. That's all. I think I need to get some legal advice to see where I stand and what I can do to remove myself as my ex always says if I want off the Morgage it will make him homeless as he won't beable to get another mortgage now. We took the Morgage out in 2001, I've not been living at the property since 2005 so a long time.

Tricky situation!

On a practical level have you let your insurers and mortgage company know that you're renting out rooms?

Hollybollybooboo
I'm guessing not! As I haven't and I don't think he would have either.

You probably should - insurance more than anything, it could be null and void unless you declare it.

Some mortgage companies need to give permission for you to take in a lodger.

Forcing a sale of the house will not make him homeless - he will have a decent capital lump sum which will enable him to get a private rental contract no trouble. You need to disentangle yourselves financially.