Tenants in common or Joint tenancy - SEN issues

[Mammia135]

I’ve read a few threads about TIC vs JT but I would love some advice specific to our situation.

We are in the process of buying a house and need to complete as quickly as possible this summer.

We have two children, older one has complex SEN. We don’t know what the future holds for the older one, whether they will ever be able to manage finances on their own. It’s quite likely we will be responsible for them for the rest of our lives. Our younger is still a baby but there’s every chance they will be neurodiverse too.

We are considering setting up a trust for them but this won’t happen until after the house purchase.

The house we are buying is very much a medium term buy - 5-10 years at best.

Given these circumstances is there any benefit to TIC over JT? I was leaning towards JT for simplicity, but also because it may make more sense for one of us to own the whole share of the house rather than divide it with one, possibly two SEN children.

Going to speak to solicitor as well but I was wondering if there are potential issues I haven’t thought of here.

TIC all the way. You can leave your share as you wish. You have no idea what may happen in even the short term. Make sure you are getting advice from a solicitor who deals in complex trusts and SEN.

If you are not married tenants in common with your will leaving your share to your children held in trust but also that your spouse has lifetime interest. If you don’t go tennant in common and one of you passes the house goes to remaining spouse it’s for them to do as they wish with no guarantee for children's rights. A marriage is usually stated a more secure set up for families together with children but you need to both discuss and look to arrange with solicitor with wills at same time as the house purchase to talk through practicalities.

Thanks for the replies. We are married.