Mortgage in my name, married later, COs in my name after marriage can I add wife to deed to avoid CO

[pmf1977]

I bought my house when I was single and am the only person named on the mortgage.
My partner moved in with her 2 children
A CO was obtained by a company I had provided services to that they claimed I didn't (they lied in court and I feel I wasn't given proper opportunity to provide full defence but that is by the by). The CO was granted
There have been a couple more charging orders granted since (I did not defend any of them)
The last time I had my house valued I was in negative equity
I am hoping I now have equity but want to know if I can add my wife to the deeds to avoid paying charging orders if I sell.

[SXGuy]

Re: Mortgage in my name, married later, COs in my name after marriage can I add wife to deed to avoi

Im not sure if that's possible, but I could be wrong, if your partner was already on the deeds, then the CO's would have been restrictions, which technically isn't as bad, however im not sure if they would change to a restriction once you add a person to the deed. Otherwise everyone would be doing it.

PlanB may shed some light on the subject, bare with us as the site was down last night and people may not be aware we are back up yet, plus its a weekend so things always move a little slower.

[Riz]

Re: Mortgage in my name, married later, COs in my name after marriage can I add wife to deed to avoi

Full CO prevents a 'disposition' of the property, and I would have thought change/addition of title counts as one of those so would be blocked?

Marriage does not give rights to legal title of it's own?

Would quite frankly be nuts if it didn't prevent this, or otherwise allowed something like this to work.

[pmf1977]

Re: Mortgage in my name, married later, COs in my name after marriage can I add wife to deed to avoi

So if we got married before the charging order was granted but I did not have my wifes name put on the deed could I still have a case that she has an interest in the property and have the charges set aside?

[PlanB]

Re: Mortgage in my name, married later, COs in my name after marriage can I add wife to deed to avoi

if we got married before the charging order was granted but I did not have my wifes name put on the deed could I still have a case that she has an interest in the property and have the charges set aside?

When you got married your wife would have acquired a beneficial interest in the property from that day onwards whether her name was on the deeds or not. Sometimes it makes sense for a wife to place a Class F charge on a property owned solely by her husband to prevent him selling it without her express permission. In some ways a Class F charge is a "charging order". Your wife should take independent legal advice (i.e. not from the same solicitor as you) on whether she should do this now to protect her position and whether it would come into effect retrospectively. There's some basic information about how this can be done on the Land Registry website here:

http://www.landregistry.gov.uk/publi...public-guide-4

The second issue is the the charging orders which followed your CCJs which are treated in chronological order when you come to sell the property. You need to know whether your wife's beneficial interest (if she placed a Class F charge on the property) would be treated as if she were a co-owner and I don't have the answer to that question. You also need to know whether her interest would be backdated (see Land Registry link which suggests it would).

You have a mortgage on the property in your sole name so if your wife does place a Class F charge on the property this may have a negative impact on your lender who has the property as security for their loan.

It's my personal view that you both need to take formal legal advice from separate solicitors to avoid any conflict of interest.

Finally you've asked whether you could have the charging orders set aside. From the little information we have I can see no reason for this to happen unless the Claimants weren't lawfully entitled to them in the first place. Perhaps you can gives us a bit more detail about these COs. The dates, amounts etc so we can see the whole picture.