How long to have your name on a house deeds?

[bond-007]

My wife bought her house 5 years ago from her parents and had the morgtage arranged thru her solicitor. She assumed that the title for the house would be changed into her name.

I went to the land registry to get a copy of the deed and I couldn't have a copy as her name was not on the deed and that her parents still were listed as the owners.

She has been paying a mortage for 5 years now. Where does she stand legally? Does she own the house? Should it take the land registry 5 years to sort out the title?

Any advice/insights would be appreciated.

 

[Vanilla]

5 years sounds like a long time. Did the land registry say whether there was a dealing pending? If not, go back and ask. If there is, it means that your wife is on the waiting list in the land registry for her file to be dealt with. If not, then the papers probably havent been lodged with them yet, and she should go to the solicitor involved and ask them to check the file and let her know the situation. Legally, if all the documents were signed at the time, she is still the beneficial owner, but just needs to become the registered owner. This would not affect her entitlement to sell, transfer or re mortgage.

 

[Purple]

I am having the same problem at the moment. I have bought 5 properties (and sold most of them) over the last 10 years and it has taken at least 3 years in every case to have the deeds registered. I was told that it is common amongst solicitors to keep the fees in their client account for ass long as possible but I don't take those sort of comments too seriously. I do think that they can be very lax in tying up the loose ends.