Getting house in joint names

[GardeningNovice]

We've been married for over six years and have three under fives together.

We bought a house just over two years ago - despite the bulk of the deposit coming from me - the house got put in just my DH name.

I've been a SAHM since birth of first DC and recently my husband was involved in a serious accident.

His stay in hospital had a lot of difficulties for us one of which was I had limited access to funds. My parents are disgusted that I've left myself so open to these kinds of problems.

I'm now in process of insisting on joint accounts, looking at life insurance, looking to see if we can sort wills out ect.

Are there good reasons to get the house in my name as well? If so how do I go about this and what is it likely to cost?

Sorry to hear about your DH. I hope he's on the mend now.

It's really easy to change the ownership, we did it a little while into our marriage.

Our conveyencer (sp?) sorted it out for us and it cost a around £20 or something like that.

From memory, it's simply a matter of filling in the right form for the land registry folk.

I expect someone else will come along who knows better than me, but I think the house needs to be in your name too, to avoid you having to pay inheritance tax should the worst happen, and you inherit the house via a will, or worse than that if there's no will I don't think you have any right to the house, it'd go to your kids I think.

I'm not expert though, so watching with interest. DP and I aren't married either.

Lowrib- allow me to be that person Actually, IHT is irrelevant. Transfers of assets between married partners are exempted from IHT (treated as not an asset transfer which is why it's so popular to just leave everything to your OH)so if Dh died and left the OP the house in his will, that would not give rise to a tax liability.

BUT if your DH dies without a will then it could cause you problems or if someone decided to contest his will (dont rule it out, however unlikely it seems at the time. Even if the claim is compltely spurious, it can take ages to sort out)

Joint names formalises your automatic entitlement should you get divorced/ the will gets contested.

Also, if your DH went bankrupt it may be important as could prevent creditors including house in assets (digs into recesses of mind for insolvency law knowledge and comes up short). This might be wrong though.

Sorry I misread the OP (it was late!)

I thought you said you were unmarried. I think you can loose the house if your partner dies and you're unmarried (can anyone confirm?) but if you're married than as BaggedandTagged says you're entitled to the house.

This reminds me must get round to writing a will!

Can anyone recommend a cheap but decent way to write a will (never done it before!)

You could also arrange to transfer the property from his sole name into your joint names as tenants in common with a Declaration of Trust in place which details how much you put in as a deposit. If you have a mortgage on the property either the lender will allow your name to be added to the existing mortgage or they will issue a fresh mortgage offer in both names. If you hold the property as tenants in common if one of you dies then the property falls into your Estate rather than passing automatically to the survivor (as it would if you were joint tenants). Most married couples hold property as joint tenants but if you want to protect the money you put in you will need a Declaration of Trust. I would suggest you see a solicitor about this. You might also want to think about a Lasting Power of Attorney, which can be useful if you wanted to manage your husband's affairs in the future. To give you an idea the solicitors I work at charge £200.00 plus VAT to transfer property between spouses if there is a mortgage, plus the Land Registry fees (which is based on the value of the property)

Thanks for all the information - I'm going to read up about declarations of trust and joint teanacy v tenants in common.

I'll get DH to ring mortgage company and see what they say - he agreed to make the current account its paid from joint - and make other bills joint. The accident has at least made him ameniable to this and other things - he previously hated thinking about what ifs ect.

lowrib - I'm also looking into a cheap decent way to write a will - so will be looking out or starting a thread on subject or on how to find a good local solicitor.

Now off to sort mine and families security out .

Hiya, haven't read all of previous replies but we are in a similar situation.

We have been married 5 years and have 1 ds. I've owned my own home in the past but dh hasn't.

Our house now is in both names(on deeds) but the mortgage is in just dh's name as I am a sahm so don't earn so there was no reason for me to be on mortgage etc. 10k of the deposit was from my own money too.

Dh is in forces and is deploying to afghan next year and must have life insurance and a Will set up before hand. It had never even crossed our minds that if anything was to happen to dh whilst at work or not what would happen with house. And vis versa really.

My main concern is if the worst was to happen the bank would want to sell the house to pay off mortgage but would they take into consideration that I half owned it and let me try to repay their loan without selling house etc.

After speaking to our bank who mortgage I also through they said as long as we had written a will saying who house will be left to and taken out enough life cover to cover outstanding mortgage etc then I would keep the house. Also they have said that if dh writes to them re:mortgage then I can have access to mortgage account details etc on his behalf. We have accounts in joint names and sole names too.

That's interesting SandyChick - I remember the solicitors saying my name couldn't be on the deeds as the morguage company had somehow messed up and just put DH name only on the morguage - will have to look into that.

If we can't get me added to mortgage then maybe if we take life insurance out and sort the will - which need doing anyway that might be enough.

Really need to get DH working on making the account in both our names and calling mortgage company seeing what they say.

He accepts the need for it so just need the action part now - it is just slow progress with everything at the moment.

Do I need to have contributed to the mortgage payments to have my name on the deeds?

Can the house be in my name too but not the mortgage?

Sorry I see SandyChick has done that. We are married.