Mesher order payment

[Freeyourmind]

Wondering if anyone has any experience in this. I have a mesher order on the family home. I have reached a trigger point for payment (partner has recently moved in with me, order states I have to pay my EXH if I co-habit for 6 months). Six months will be January so I am looking at re-mortgaging to make his payment. Mortgage on the property is in my sole name. EXH has already stated he doesn't want me to pay him yet, he wants me to wait until the youngest DD is 18 (9 years away). If I do pay him now, he wants the value that it will be in 9 years time! Ludicrous obviously as he also doesn't pay any child maintenance.

I have arranged to have the house valued by a chartered surveyor, and intend to go with that figure to work out his share. My question is, do I have to get his agreement on the figure before I pay him, or can I just do it and leave him to challenge it if he chooses?

You have to get his agreement, as he will refuse to remove the charge otherwise.

He is of course entirely wrong. You are doing the right thing.

Before you go to the cost of instructing a surveyor I suggest you try and agree a joint instruction with him. If he refuses to cooperate you'll have to apply to court (you should expect the court to order him to pay your costs) and the court will want there to be a joint valuation to avoid any suggestion of bias.

Many thanks for your reply. Had a horrible feeling this would be the case, I really do think I will have to apply to court. He's now talking about re-negotiating the whole original settlement in exchange for taking his money now (still at the figure in 9 years time!). Such nonsense. The marriage was very abusive, so I feel he will use this now as a chance to continue the abuse as I've been quite good of late at removing myself from it. The original settlement was a straight forward 50/50 split anyway so I'm not concerned about that.

I will send him one last e-mail to agree to a joint instruction without any add ons from him and then if the answer is no, apply to court.

Thanks again.

Do make sure you make it clear to him he will be paying a lot of legal costs if he does not reach agreement now.

Also does the order say you can buy him out at any point?
This might be something for people to inclue in these orders going forward as it must happen a lot that you get to a position of being able to buy out your other half and want to do it sooner rather than later.

We didn't have a mesher order but there were 3 later tranches of the clean break at £100k a year in years 1 - 3 afte the divorce I had to pay him. I instead paid that off sooner by agreement with him which we documented and with a reduction (slight) in the sum to reflect early repayment).