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A storm is brewing in our marriage that could screw me up for life, and I am putting together a contingency plan for that fateful day.
I have posted elsewhere about my marriage problems, but I need to make sensible decisions about my finances now - specifically property - and would really appreciate some advice from others who might have experienced some of these problems. Lots of forum members have obviously got into bad tangles with money and property, and I would rather avoid them if I can.
We are married 6 years and have two very young kids. We have a house with a £140K mortgage in my name (both deeds and mortgage), but luckily we also have roughly the same amount in the bank from the sale of our last house, split between my account and her account.
This would all be fine if we could just pay down the debt, as I would like to do. Unfortunately, her mother has been living with us for over two years (helping with the children whilst wife works) and the wife wants us to use the funds in the bank to pay for a flat for her nearby. (The mother basically hasn't got money left to contribute to this, only to cover the bills).
If we go ahead with this plan as the wife intends, using equity in our house, I can foresee a future situation where if I have to leave the house and the marriage because of escalating conflict, I would still have the mortgage liability, as well as CSA, extra rent etc to pay, which will kill me off.
My financial advisor knows about my wife's plan and has suggested that we pay down most of the mortgage, and raise a separate mortgage for the flat that doesn't put the house at risk. My liability on the house would then be reduced to the new flat deposit (say £40K). He has suggested using a buy-to-let mortgage, but I believe that we could also use a 'dependant relative' mortgage to get better mortgage rates. The details of the deal would be very important. Obviously I would need to ensure that the mother-in-law has no rights over the property other than as a tenant, so that I could force a sale if I had to, or even move in myself one day. I imagine that my wife would never want to sell our house, therefore would be very hard to release the money from that if we separate, also would negatively affect the kids schools. I'm not sure if I should have it in just my name, or in joint names, or have a separate legal charge on the property, or whatever.
Are there any other pitfalls I would need to be aware of, that might need me to veto the property purchase entirely? It's going to be very hard to avoid it altogether, I have already put it off for a couple of years but having her living here is making our marriage problems even worse and if there is a fail-safe way of getting her out of the house that protects me in the future I'd be happy to do it.
Thanks a lot....
It might be worth asking your financial advisor about buying the flat on the basis of it going into your name, while transferring the house into your wife's name - if the split happens, your mother in law can move in with your wife and you take the flat over. I think its worth talking to your wife now though to sort out what she thinks the future is.
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