Hi,
I am a single parent of one. We live in a small 2 bed house which I currently own. I met the father of my son 11 years ago and he moved into this house with me, I fell pregnant with our son not long after my ex partner moved in. We had our son in 2007 and were happy for a while, so much so that I out my ex- partners name on the mortgage, I went to a solicitor who drew up a trust deed of which we both signed, this I was led to believe was to protect the equity I had in the house the point of adding him.
To cut a very long story short he did not turn out to be the father or partner I wanted for my son, although he worked he drank heavily every day, was verbally abusive and short tempered with our son, the list could go on but I'm sure you get the picture. During all off this time I was working full time and paying half of everything in the house.
Our son was getting older I strongly felt that his fathers behavior towards me and in general would have a detrimental affect to his well being, I was an emotional wreck and I didn't want my son to think this was a normal situation. I sought advice from a local charity for women in abusive relationships and met with them on several occasions, they helped me understand that my situation was unacceptable and gave me the information I needed to get my ex - partner out of the house. In November 2015 I managed to do this by getting a court order, a week later we went to court and agreed childcare arrangements and finances etc.
The following year he told me he wanted his share from the house, with lots of solicitors involvment it turned out that the trust deed drawn up at the time of him going on the mortgage was wrongly completed and was not worth the paper it was written on. So he was entitled to half of the equity in the house which at the time would have been about £70,000 to him. With the help of my mother we were able to pay for a really good solicitor who told managed to reduce the amount to half. My mother had to re-mortgage her house so I could pay him off. I pay monthly interest only on this figure and in 9 years time £25,000 will need to be paid off as a lump sum.
So financially we are struggling, I have my son with me 4 days a week , I still work and get working and child tax credits, I also get maintenance of £220 a month from my ex-partner. I pay for everything for our son, clothes, clubs, childcare
school uniform etc. I work 5 days a week and do some casual work some evenings to earn a little bit extra when my son is with his Dad. Just before Christmas our heating broke for 5 weeks we had no heating and hot water and I had to borrow more money from my Mum to get it sorted.
The long and short of it is that I am struggling to maintain the house. I can afford the bills all of them but when something goes wrong I am stuck. I can't find another job to earn more money and and am now considering selling the house but then what? I have looked into shared ownership and it seems I don't qualify as I am not a first time buyer, we can downsize but I'm really not sure how much more we can downsize. I really feel stuck in a rut, the house needs so much work doing to it and I can't afford to pay to get it done but I also owe so much money. Does anyone know of any housing solutions or ideas for us?? I don't really want to sell and rent as the money will be gone in ten years. !!