The tick-box was on page four of an online form from our conveyancer, and the question was: "How do you wish to hold the property?" We'd had that page open in a browser tab for nine days. Matt said he'd look at it when he'd finished marking, and I said I'd look at it when the payroll run was done, and between us we were very good at not looking.
Two ways to own a house together
Our conveyancer put it in one sentence each. Joint tenants own the whole property together, with no separate shares, and when one dies the other automatically owns it all. Tenants in common each own a share, which can be equal or unequal, and each person's share goes to whoever they name in a will rather than automatically to the other. Plenty of couples are joint tenants and it suits them fine. It's also what most people end up with, which is partly why it needed an actual decision rather than a shrug.
The reason we couldn't just tick joint tenants is arithmetic. My Lifetime ISA comes to about £18,940 and Matt has £9,200 in savings. That's £28,140 between us, and I'm putting in roughly two thirds of it. The gap is £9,740, so if we owned the house 50/50 with nothing else written down and it all went wrong, half of that gap, £4,870, would be my money walking out of the door in Matt's pocket.
The evening at the table
We had the conversation on a Tuesday night at the table in the flat, after tea, on full stomachs and with no excuse to leave the room. I put the numbers on a sheet of paper because I find it easier than saying them. Matt read it and said he'd have been fine with fifty-fifty. I said I knew, it was my money he'd be fine with, and for about ninety seconds neither of us said anything else.
In the flat it had always been simple. The rent was £725, we each put in £362.50 by standing order, and neither of us ever thought about it. Everything had been equal because everything had been small, and I think that's what made this conversation feel so strange.
It was awkward in the particular way that money talk is awkward when you're fond of each other. Then Matt said he'd sooner have it written down now, while it was only maths, than find out later that we'd each assumed something different. He went and put the kettle on. By the second cup we'd stopped being careful with each other and were joking about it.
What we signed
We chose tenants in common, and our conveyancer drew up a declaration of trust for £300 including VAT. It records who put in what, and says what happens on a sale: the mortgage is paid off, then my £18,940 comes back to me and his £9,200 comes back to him, and whatever's left is split down the middle. That isn't a bad deal for him. He still gets half of any gain in the value of the house, and he pays half of everything it costs.
The running costs are simpler. The mortgage and the bills will come out of a joint account that we each pay the same amount into on payday, so once payday has been and gone nobody owes anybody anything. The sums only get uneven at the very start, and that's the part we've now written down.
Being tenants in common also means our shares go by will, and neither of us has a will. That's a different job for a different professional, and it's on the list for the new year. Anyone in a similar spot would want to ask their own conveyancer what suits them, because the right answer depends on things I don't know about your situation.
When we'd signed, I said to Matt that it wasn't very romantic. He thought about it for a bit. "No," he said, "but neither is a boiler." The form went back at 9.20 the next morning and I closed the tab.
