Dear LPG,

This one goes out to the ladies.  Did you know that if you are the part owner of a house you are still a sort of tenant and it is important to know which sort of tenant you are?

It is often accepted that your status here only comes up when the person or one of the people that you own a house with dies, but there are other instances where your ‘tenant’ status could make quite a difference.  

Some time ago I worked out that my marriage was not going to outlast my retirement and I went to a solicitor who did me a great favour by explaining this whole ‘tenant’ status point to me.

If you are a ‘Tenant in common’ both you and the other owners of that property have the right to do whatever you want with your share of the property in the event that it needs to be sold or if one of the other owner dies. Each owner has the right to leave his share of the property to any beneficiary upon the owner's death. But If you are a joint tenant with right of survivorship (JTROS, JTWROS or JT TEN WROS), if the inevitable happens to one or the other owners the value of that property will become evenly divided between the surviving owners.

It is all very complicated and there are advantages on both sides of the coin.  The solicitor who explained this to me told me that in the 1960s it was quite common for houses to be bought in the husband’s name alone, because women had a habit of having babies and were thought of as a bit a of liability.  She advised me, because of my then shaky marital situation, to get my status changed so that I was a tenant in common which made it a lot easier at that time for me to get my fair share of the value of our house when my ex and I eventually sold it.

What you do and where you are in life has a lot to do with which option is best for you and it is all a bit of a lottery because no one really knows when it will be their time to pop their clogs, but I would strongly suggest that everyone who shares the ownership of their house with someone else checks that their tenancy status is the best for their circumstances. 

PA, Forest Hill

LPG would agree that this is a really complicated issue but found some information on the subject…

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