Anyone that can offer legal advice

[Justmarmalade]

Hi all, firstly, I know that at some point I may need to seek professional legal advice but I’m hoping there may be someone here that can give me an overview of my options at this time.

Myself and partner are splitting up, we are not married and we have a very young DC together. We currently live together in a house with a joint mortgage, mortgage and all bills split equally.

we have had our house valued, I know that my partner will want to get the house sold ASAP and take his money to move on.

we have another two years left on our mortgage before it is up for review.

i would personally like to stay in our house until these two years have passed so we can exit the mortgage penalty free as I will need every spare penny I can get, and also, as we all know the housing market is a shit show at the moment and moving to a decent area with good school prospects for our DC is my absolute priority (whereas I know partner will be less bothered about schools etc)
i don’t want to end up moving into a less desirable area or into a house I don’t really want to be in and then be left with less choice for schools, social activities etc because that’s either all that’s available on the market or all I can afford at this time.

If I had the next two years to keep saving (I am very good with saving and money in general), we could exit the mortgage penalty free and hopefully the housing market might be looking a bit healthier so as to give me more choice.

The problem is that I know my partner will not be happy with this suggestion as it will mean he will either have to live with his parents for that period of time or rent.

legally can I ask him to do this and still pay half the mortgage if I take care of bills? Or how would it work practically speaking?

Am I being unreasonable by asking him to do this? I know it’s not ideal for any of us but I genuinely think this is the best thing for me and my DC going forward and I think it is unreasonable for partner to just think he can cut his losses and move on with no thought to how we forward plan for our DC. As an aside, partner will be financially better off as his parents are reasonably well off and will be able to help him financially whilst I do not have the same luxury.

Thank you for any advice.

First of all report your own post and ask it to be moved to legal. There are some excellent family lawyers there who will point you in the right direction.

On AIBU you are not going to get legal advice. You are going to get lots of wildly different opinions regarding your situation with none or little of it having a basis in law.

From my view point I think you have a few choices. It depends how arsey you want to be. As you both own the home you can just stall and refuse to sell. He would then have to take you to court to force it.

There may also be a possibility to make a claim to house the children under schedule 1 of the Children's Act 1989

www.kabirfamilylaw.co.uk/schedule-1-children-act-1989/
But as ever .. you need legal advice for this it's not a simple DIY court application .

This is a tough one. The courts would take the view that if the dc can be adequately housed elsewhere, then the main home should be sold. I guess it depends on how much equity there is. If you fight though, the legal costs will eat your savings.

Thank you, I will all to move post to legal

I think it's unfair to expect him to pay half the mortgage and also rent or stay at parents. If I were him I would say no to that.

Surely you would need to buy himout to stay in the home. You’ve fewer rights being unmarried and he’s not going to pay the mortgage on a property he doesn’t live in for 2 years!

Legally you can ask him to do anything you wish. Including sprouting wings and flying. I dont think you’re asking if legally you can ask him. I think you’re asking is if legally can you make him and the answer to that is absolutely not. You can go through a court case but the costs will be significant and he could simply stop paying his share of the mortgage

it’s also a shit deal for him to be fair.

Legally as half owner he can force a sale. You can drag your heels and drag it out but probably not for two years so I really wouldn't bother.
I also think your suggestion of him putting his life on hold while he lives with his parents and pays half your mortgage just to save a few quid js ridiculously unfair from a moral point of view.
Any court will also agree.

I think maybe a didnt word My OP particularly well as I wasn’t really meaning whether I could legally force him to still pay half the mortgage for two years whilst not living there as I know I can’t do that, I suppose I was more asking for any anecdotal stories or advice from anyone that may have been through similar or any solutions we could come to.

i don’t want to be in any way arsey etc towards him, ultimately we have a DC together and would both like to have an amicable relationship going forward for the sake of our DC, hopefully he feels the same and won’t make things difficult for me either.

i agree that asking him to effectively put his life on hold for two years is not ideal, the situation is less than ideal for me as well but I think it’s not really about just the two of us anymore, if it were just the two of us I’d say let’s split the mortgage penalty and just sell up and move on wherever we can as if I was on my own I’d be less bothered about which area to live in etc but in my mind it’s not as simple as that with children involved.

There is the option that you both carry on living in the house and co-parent, put it up for sale 6 months before the mortgage deal ends - so the end is on sight.

He may choose to stay at his parents some weekends so you can have space from each other.

You could "nest" rent a room in a shared house that you both pay towards and take it in turns to stay there whilst the other parent is in the house with DC.

The biggest obstacle will be if/when someone meets someone else and wants to take that relationship further.