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Original poster

advice

11 replies

shreddies · 20/10/2006 12:54

Hallo
I'm after some advice here, I am pregnant, and am getting married next year. I own a house that my bf has moved into, I pretty much own it outright, so there is a lot of equity in it. My partner has some savings, but not masses and is not a high earner.

I am really happy that anything that I earn from now, or any windfall payments (I am about to get a redundancy payout) are ours and ours to share, but I really want to protect the equity in the house, as it is my inheritance and my financial security.

My parents divorced when I was quite young, and I am very aware that marriages do break up and that I might have to fend for myself and my children financially. Dp would never be able to pay much in the way of maintenance

If we start to pay the mortgage out of our joint account am I saying that the house is ours to share? And would any sort of pre-nup make any difference?

Really appreciate any advice! Thanks in advance

OP posts:
Iklboo · 20/10/2006 13:03

MIL got divorced this year. She had only been married for 2 years to this twerp. She paid the mortgage out of her own account, paid for holidays, most bills etc. His wage (such as it was) covered food & entertainment, his cigs & beer.

She had to give him £17,500 on the house as part of the divorce settlement

Since she's now retired she had to take out a secured loan for the money or he was going to force her to sell.

Get a pre-nup!

finefatmama · 20/10/2006 13:04

may I ask why you need to borrow on the house in the first place?

MamaGhoul · 20/10/2006 13:04

You need to get a Solicitor to draw up an agreement.

This will either say that the first X% of equity is yours, or the first £X is yours.

E.g. if you have £80K of equity in it and your house is worth £100K - you could say that you own 90% of the house (your existing £80K and half of whatever equity you get in teh future).

OR, you could say you get the first £80K from any future house sale, then half the equity.

Hope this makes sense!

NotActuallyAMum · 20/10/2006 13:14

Definitely get an agreement drawn up to protect yourself. I got a £50k settlement from my ex for my half of the house we shared and I (rather stupidly!) gave it to my DP to pay his divorce settlement. Don't get me wrong, DP and I are very happy - we're getting married next year too - but I sometimes wonder what would happen if we were to split...

Please don't let it happen to you, it's worth a small solicitor's bill for peace of mind

Original poster
shreddies · 20/10/2006 14:59

Hallo

Not planning to borrow money on the house, but we will want to get a bigger place together once the baby comes, mine's quite small. We're just going through and sorting out finances now as I'm about to go on maternity leave.

Does anyone know if paying the mortgage from our joint account will give him rights over the property? and if so cd a legal contract over ride this?

thanks for all advice, really appreciated!

OP posts:
80sMum · 20/10/2006 15:08

I don't think prenuptial agreements hold up under the law, so probably not worth getting one done.

Presumably, you'll be piling your equity into the new house? So, what you'll need is a legal document stating what percentage of the new house belongs to you and what to your DP. You need a solicitor to draw this up for you, once you've found the house you want and had an offer accepted. You can pay the mortgage jointly from a joint account, but you'll still own 'x' percent and he'll still own 'y' percent.

TwigTwoolett · 20/10/2006 15:14

being married gives him HALF of all your assets unless you put something in writing beforehand .. and even then it would have to be watertight as pre-nups

if marriage breaks up in first few years you'd probably naturally have more right to it

but the whole point of marriage is that you share everything

90K of the equity in our house came from the sale of my flat (DH didn't own anything) .. I haven't done anything about it and fully expect if we ever split that we would get 50:50 split .. but then I don't believe in divorce

TheBlonde · 20/10/2006 15:17

Twig is right
Only way to fully protect your assets is not to marry!

Mumpbump · 20/10/2006 15:26

My dh and I are tenants in common paid 50/50 for the deposit. But we have an agreement that any sale proceeds on divorce will be split pro-rata with the amount that we have put into the house and renovations to it. It has meant keeping a schedule of all the payments for building work as evidence in case of future need, but would hopefully avoid any argument about what is fair.

Pre-nups aren't legally binding, but there has been some stuff in the press recently about the Courts giving them some recognition when deciding how to divvy up assets where both parties are working. They are legally binding in France, so I guess you could always have one subject to French law, but that opens up a whole new can of worms... Broad brush agreement in writing sounds like a good idea - the Courts can't recognise something that doesn't exist, if you see what I mean...

trixymalixy · 20/10/2006 16:55

When my boyfriend (now DH) and I bought our first house together I sold the flat which I owned and used the equity from that to pay the deposit. The solicitor had me sign a document stating that I was happy that the house would be 50/50 rather than me have a bigger share if you see what I mean. So I think you would be able to get something legal drawn up to protect your equity.

Pre nups aren't legally binding in the UK.

until you are married payign a mortgage out of a joint account doesn't mean anything as a friend of a friend found to her cost when her fiance died just before they were married. even though she had been paying half of the mortgage since the flat was bought it went to his family and she didn't get a penny, and then they threw her out of it.

Judy1234 · 20/10/2006 20:38

There's a presumption of a 50/50 split of assets unless it's a very short marriage or there are children. So he stands to gain half of the value of the house and your savings in due course if you split up. Prenuptials do not have legal force in England although a court might choose to look at it. I was divorced 3 years ago and had to pay huge amounts to my ex husband.

By the way if you put the marital home as tenants in common or if you sign something saying you keep your existing assets the courts are entirely free to ignore that I'm afraid. When people fall out, when there's adultery or violence you can bet your bottom dollar any previous "agreement" goes out of the window. The risk is if he say looks after the baby and you work the marriage breaks up and he gets the house because he needs it to houes the child and you lose the child and have to pay him maintenance. If instead you are looking after the child which needs a home it is likely you would keep it but he gets his "share" only when certain things happen like you remarry.

In the light of the above risks you might choose to live together instead as that makes a difference.

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