Death, property and debt

It would be worth posting this to uk.legal.moderated as well as here.

It would be worth posting this to uk.legal.moderated as well as here.

If the widow cannot raise a mortgage then they will have either to downsize or sell and rent.

Bitstring , from the wonderful person Eric Jones said

I think the issue is whether the other parties who are owed money can/will try to force a sale of the house to release any equity (yes, I know the OP said there probably wasn't any, but that's his opinion, not theirs) to cover the debts to them.

Of course I'm old enough that the concept of a mortgage without matching life cover just boggles my mind anyway. Never mind the concept of having a family without some provision for looking after them.

I guess the first step would be to discuss with the mortgage company to see if they are actually sitting on a policy nobody knows about, but it doesn't sound likely. It's also fairly essential to know exactly how the house ownership is written (single name, joint tenants, tenants in common, or what).

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What has the world come to if one has to be "old" to be boggled by this?

Doesn't it? I thought that lenders generally insist on life cover in cases where there are dependants, precisely because they don't like the bad press resulting from having to kick them out into the street.

I suspect what has happened is that the chap raised the mortgage while single, and the wife and kids came along later, and the lender wasn't told.

Quite. I expect it'll be single name (his).

She should get herself down to her nearest CAB pdq. They're bound to have a fair bit of experience with this kind of thing.

My first response is that i'd be surprised if he didn't have life cover, as it's often a requirement of a mortgage.

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Nope. I took my current mortgage out when I had a wife and child, with no life insurance, and interest only with no repayment vehicle. AIRI they didn't even try to sell me life insurance.

And they wonder why they've got a problem :-} (not with you obviously, but in general)

Bitstring , from the wonderful person Colin Wilson said

Also provided by most decent employers, assuming he was employed.

Quite. This is what has dumbfounded us beyond belief, to say the least.

They have told us that there is no such policy, at least not with them - although we are currently awaiting banking documents to see if other payments were being made elsewhere.

The mortgage was in his name only - I'm not sure if that is what you mean though, when you say how the house ownership is written...

They were very thorough checking salary details, which is the main reason for people getting into difficulty (dodgy brokers encouraging people to lie about their income and lenders not checking). But I was surprised they didn't ask for any proof of a repayment vehicle. My company scheme pension/death benefit scheme was more than adequate to cover the mortgage but they didn't ask for any details/proof of this either.

Bitstring , from the wonderful person Todd said

'Who does the land registry think is the owner of the property' (if it is registered with them - depends when it was bought), otherwise 'whose name is on the deeds'.

Ah, OK - not sure - I suppose we'll have to find out...

Thanks for the clarification.

Colin Wilson writes

When we bought the house in 1961 it was a requirement to take out a whole life policy, which covered the mortgage for the first 5 years and then reduced to a with profits policy.