My Solicitor thinks there is no hope !

Here I find myself in this sticky situation. I have been to a few solicitors and nobody seems to know what to do ! I was with my girlfriend for approximately 9 years. We have a daugter together. My ex had a council house. We applied together for a "Right To Buy" scheme. The solicitor at the time talked us through and said that first of all my Ex's name would go on the deeds and after a certain amount of time mine would go on the deeds. We applied for a joint mortgage to which both of our names were added. From this time I paid the mortgage in full every month for several years solely as my ex had never worked. I paid for the mortgage, bills and the maintenance to the property. Then in 2007 we split up, I left the property immediately. Because we had a daughter together and my ex didnt work I continued to pay the mortgage for approximately a further 6 months to give my ex chance to go and get a job and pay for it herself. I applied for the register of the deeds and then found out my name was nowhere to be seen. I am on the mortgage but not on the deeds. I contacted the council and they said the forms had been filled out incorrectly and that the application had gone through with my ex's name only. I need to desperately get off this mortgage because while my name is on if she defers then I am at risk, also I really need to get another mortgage because I cant seem to move on with my life and this is now 4 years later. I asked her to Remortgage but she said she cant because she has CCJ's and no lender is interested even though she has large equity in the house. Am I correct in thinking I could apply for an order to sell ? surely a judge would see I can not move on with my life while I am on that mortgage ? otherwise her plan will be to live there forever and I will be trapped for furthermore. Very very stressed ! Could I apply for this and could I apply with legal aid as I recently got made redundant in March this year? If anyone can shed any light please do so. Thanks PS the mortgage company have since been taken over and have no interest in removing me what so ever

Leaving aside the fact that you weren't married, what you are describing sounds like what many posters on here go through (usually, but not always, men). Which is that, regardless of who paid for what during the relationship, or who worked and who didn't, when children are involved their right to a decent roof over their head comes first and foremost over everything.
Often one party (usually the pwc) cannot afford the mortgage on their own but as they have the children then the other parent has to remain as guarantor on the mortgage until the child(ren) reaches their majority. It often means that the nrp cannot move on with their lives as they can't get another mortgage; however in the eyes of the law your needs are secondary to that of your child (and the PWC, who comes as a package with the child).
I don't know if this is exactly the same as you never married but I suspect you will find yourself in a similar situation.
Sorry, I know this is not what you want to hear.

Hi thanks for your reply. I wont be interested in any financial gain from being removed I just simply want to come off. She is working now and has afforded to pay the mortgage by herself for a couple of years now, since I stopped paying in 2008. My view is that she can still provide a roof for our daughter but she just needs to do it in a different house. If she sold the house she would have approx 45K in equity, a nice deposit for another house or plenty of rental. She is also in another relationship and I am sure between them they could do something. In fact in the area we live you you can almost buy a house outright with that sort of money or not far off. But in this case she just doesnt want to do anything to help me move on. I fear you might be right ! thank you for taking the time to post back, wonder if its worth me trying now

All right, you are not married. It makes one hell of a difference. With married couples the Court has wide powers to redistribute ownership of a property.

Let us start with the circumstances under which the property was acquired.

The right to buy belongs to the secure tenant, who I take to be your girlfriend. In certain circumstances the secure tenant can claim a right to share the right to buy with someone who is not the secure tenant. There used to be a time when I could tell you the answer to this straight off the bat. But I can't remember now and it's probably changed anyway. But my recollection is that the tenant can join in a member of his/her family who has lived with the tenant as husband and wife for at least 12 months.

So the first question I'd ask is, could your partner have joined you with her in exercising the right to buy. If need be I can look this up but I don't have the Encyclopaedia of Housing any more, alas alack and lackaday.

Right then. when your partner bought that Council house, was it the intention to share ownership ? Or was the intention that your partner would be the sole owner ?

You see, what is interesting me is how a solicitor could allow you to enter into a mortgage on a property on which you had no legal interest. Or, for that matter, why did you sign a mortgage when you were not the owner of the property ? Only the legal owner can sign a mortgage. If you are not the legal owner, you cannot mortgage it, and in just the same way, you can't sell it. It would be legally OK for you to act as a guarantor, of course. But was that what you intended ?

You see, I could go into a learned legal dissertation on how someone who is not the legal owner can establish a claim to the property. I could tell you about constructive and resulting trusts and proprietary estoppel.
I could refer you to the recent Supreme Court decision in Kernott v Jones.

Now, that will sound like chinese to you, but to go down that route you need a specialist lawyer, and the costs would be high, wholly out of proportion to what you want, which is to be released from the mortgage. There is no way in which a Court can release you from the mortgage. I couldn't really recommend it. But I will send you a PM.

LLM