Tenants in Common

So helpful, thank you very much everyone.

Ah, that's the phrase I was looking for Siope, "Life interest"! Means our daughters can't throw remaining spouse out of the home to get their 50% (not that they would, hopefully, but better safe than sorry!)

We’ve always owned our homes as tenants in common, and not always in equal shares. With the current house, we have equal shares, and our Wills leave these to our sons, with a life interest to each other.

We did this too, when I bought a house with my ex-partner. My half would go to my family and the other half to his. It seemed the fair thing to do as we had no plans to marry.

A few years later the realtionship ended and the house sold and the money split down the middle with no mess or upset.

It seems a fair and easy way to make sure everyone's happy.

We've done this. We each own 50% of the house. If either of us dies, their share goes to our daughters equally, with the proviso that the remaining spouse has the right to live in the house until death. When the remaining spouse dies, their 50% also goes to our daughters.

It was all explained very carefully by our solicitor. If a surviving spouse decides to downsize, technically our daughters would be entitled to 50% of any profit on the transaction but again we have an agreement through the solicitor that this will only happen with consent.

We did it to protect our children's inheritance in case either of us remarried when one of us died, so that they would at least get 50% of the value of any property even if the surviving spouse changed their will on remarriage. This is getting less and less likely as we age, but you never know!

I'm sure "Germanshepherdsmum" will know all the ins and outs of this and can give good advice.

We were advised to do this when buying a house with my parents over 30 years ago. The reason given was that we would not be able to sell the house without my parents' agreement (and vice versa). That situation didn't arise, so I don't know what might have happened if it had. When my father died my mother inherited his share and when she died their 2 quarters of the property came to DH and me. There was no problem with probate etc in either case.