Legal jargon on deeds

gillybob so more problems ahead?

Thank you everyone who is wdpknded to my post . We ended up seeing a solicitor in the end as the Citizens Advice ( should be renamed benefits advice ) were worse than useless . I knew more than they did .
Not easy to sort out it seems but knowing the whereabouts of the person who’s rightful debt it is does help. Things could get nasty when we pass details over to solicitor though . Oh dear .

There were charges attached to a leasehold flat we bought. They were for debts incurred by the freeholder, who'd also owned and lived in the flat before the person we'd bought it from.

He had supposedly disappeared off the face of the earth but in fact was living just a few miles away under another name - i.e. hiding from creditors. I had to employ a tracing service to find him - an absentee Fholder had caused all sorts of problems with the purchase so we had decided to buy the FH to save any such problems in future.
His debts were then paid from what we paid for the FH.

That aside, I do think it's profoundly annoying that deeds etc. are written in jargon that's not immediately clear to anyone who isn't a solicitor. High time they were written in plain English. Ours were written in 1905 and anyone would think they were intended to be as obscure as possible to the average layman.

The piece I found was named ‘Practice Guide 31’ on the Gov.uk website, but it deals with removing the legal charge and what forms will be required.

AsMonica has said, if the other owner of the property was unaware of the charge then the actual charge needs to be investigated first, it then needs to be discharged, sounds fishy though, if the property was legally jointly owned.

I’m seeing CA with the person concerned tomorrow . Sadly no money to pay a solicitor .

And there the problem lies M0nica the house is in negative equity so theres not even enough money to pay the first charge holder ( the mortgage company) . It’s a mess .

If a legal charge is placed on property by one of two joint owners without the other owner agreeing to or knowing about the charge, then the person who agreed the charge has probably committed the crime of fraud.

What can be done about it will depend on the circumstances of the fraud and to what extent the other person had any knowledge of it.

I suspect that if the house is being sold on the break-up of a relationship, then if fraud is proved, the charge will be deducted entirely from the fraudsters share of the proceeds.

But this is a case which desperately needs legal advice from Citizen's Advice or, better still, a solicitor.

Do you have a link at all Bestwishes I can’t find anything on HM.Gov

There is a section of the Government website about removing legal charges on a property.

Thank you for that hildajenniJ that has proved a great help!

"My" particular problem relates to a legal charge that were put on a property without one of the owners knowledge. I want to know if this can be removed?

The ownership of the access road to our property is uncertain, so we are working with a solicitor to find out who exactly owns the land. He is researching it all with the land registry. I found the following to be helpful when I was trying to understand the documents.
freeconveyancingadvice.co.uk/sale-purchase/official-copies-land-registry