Hi all, I’m looking for views on a sensible legal/financial arrangement. My partner and I have been together 5 years and looking to move in together this year. I have one child, 18, living at home, he has none. For practical and financial reasons we would move into his house and I plan to sell mine (no desire to rent and be a landlord). I have around £100k equity in my house and he has c£67k left on his mortgage with probably £120k equity. The plan would be to either clear his mortgage or make maximum overpayments each year and invest/make home improvements with the balance of my equity. We both work full time, I’m the highest earner earning £65k but have higher outgoings (though that will change a bit in the next year). My partner agrees we should have a joint account for bills/savings but separate accounts for our own spending/saving - his reasoning is he might want to buy an expensive bike and wants to feel he can do it without that impacting my ability to spend/save (I’m not a splurger!) plus I earn more so he’d feel like he was unfairly benefitting from that. I'm a bit more relaxed about but I think he's probable sensible - I can be over generous when I'm not always in a position to be. As the higher earner I’d contribute towards bills on a proportionate rather than equal basis anyway, particularly as there is my son who is not yet financially independent, and gets no support from his father.
Obviously we’d jointly own the home and I want there to be a fair allocation of equity so neither of us is in a worse position if we split. Also protecting my son’s inheritance (assuming there will be one). Partner has no children nor nieces/nephews and whilst he's said he would be I know it's not given that my son would be his beneficiary until that's written into wills which neither of us have at the moment. I was thinking of taking out life insurance of which my son is the beneficiary (he already is through my employment benefit but I won’t work there forever) so our house would pass fully to my partner on my death.
I hope this doesn’t sound clinical but we’re in our 50’s, I am divorced and for a number of reasons I chose to be the financial loser in that scenario but those circumstances wouldn’t apply now.
Thank you