Adding your partner to your mortgage

If you want to put your partner’s name on your mortgage you need to contact your mortgage lender to arrange this.

They will be able to talk you through the costs involved.

These could include additional stamp duty payments, legal fees and mortgage lender’s charges for the “deed of variation”.

However property owners should think very carefully before adding a partner to their mortgage, even if they are getting married.

By getting married the property will automatically pass from one spouse to the other in the event of death, and provided life cover was in place to repay the mortgage there would be no advantage to adding your partner to it.

In the event of a split, as a married couple you both have rights so would have a claim on the property irrespective of whose name or names appear on the deeds.

If you are cohabiting adding both names onto the property will ensure you both get fair rights if the property is sold.

However if you bought the property alone and it had built up a certain amount of equity, it is a good idea to protect your investment in case you later split up with your partner.

Under a tenants in common arrangement each half of the couple own a defined share of the property agreed at the outset. If you have joint tenancy agreement you will jointly own the property in full.