mortgage advice

[marielle]

Hey people,

I am a bit at a loss about the mortgage i am in the process of getting.
My situation is the following. I am building a house with my fiance on land that was given to him by his parents.
First hurdle. We are in the process of changing the ownership of the site. If i appear on that document then we will have to pay taxes and fees so we were advised by the family solicitor to change the ownership to my fiance's name only as this is a present from his parents hence no fees.
The bank has agreed to make the mortgage in both our names even though the site will be in his name only.
What will this mean if we split up or if one of us decides they want out or if one of us dies?
There is a mention on the offer of advance from the bank of a "deed of postponement /deed of confirmation" by me confirming i have no further interest in the property. I have no idea what that means but i sure don't like the sound of it. Can anyone help me with this?
Should i go to yet another solicitor (family solicitor for site, bank solicitor for mortgage...) and pay more fees to write up a contract of some kind between us before considering going further? If we do nothing what will happen in the eventualities i listed?
We are so confused right now we are considering running to the registery office and getting married! At least there would be some help from the law then!!!!!

 

[Redzer]

Are you getting married in the short, medium or long term?

The issue is associated with the period after you draw down the mortgage and before you're married.

If one of you dies then your mortgage protection policy should kick in and the remaining person gets the cash value of the remaining mortgage. Pardon my frankness but if you die then its less of a problem! However if your fiance dies and hasn't left the site to you in his will then it gets complicated. A legal mind would have to take on this discussion from here if you want to know further as I'm out of my depth!

If you split up or one of you decides you want out then you'd probably end up having to repay the outstanding mortgage at that time and negotiating an acceptable compromise. While its a possibility to consider it'd be the same situation if you were married and splitting i.e. negotiation. The alternative is a pre-nuptial type contract effective immediatially and if you're getting into that over a site, well good luck to you. My personal, unprofessional advice is don't sweat the small stuff and keep an eye on the big picture. Hopefully someone else can give you a legal perspective on the various forms but I'd say sign and get on with it as there's a lot of legal scary sounding mumbo jumbo which is basically just common sense. Worst case scenario and no-one on this site makes you any the wiser, the solicitors you already have should assist.