Restriction on property sale

[Raybok]

Hope someone can help me with this.

 

My wife is in the process of selling her formal marital home, from her previous marriage. She accepted an offer and everything was progressing well until today when we had a call from her conveyancer. There are 3 restrictions registered with the Land Registry. Two of the restrictions were in relation to debts belonging to her ex-husband - these creditors have agreed to the sale and will remove the restrictions.

The 3rd restriction is worded as follows:

"RESTRICTION: No disposition of the registered estate by the proprietor of the registered estate is to be registered without a written consent signed by ----- ------ of --- ------ Ltd, full address"

 

The conveyancer has contacted this company and was told that the restriction was put in place due to her ex-husbands IVA, which has since failed because he did not keep up repayments. They have said that it will not be removed until the whole debt has been removed, which amounts to nearly £90,000 between 9 creditors. As such they have said that they will not give written consent to the sale. The conveyancer has therefore told us that she cannot proceed with the sale unless we have the money to clear her ex-husbands debts! The equity in the house is only £20k which, after costs, amount to £7.5k each, nowhere near enough to clear the debt. My wife has phoned this company herself but they refuse to speak to her, stating that as the debt was her ex's they cannot discuss it with her.

 

Currently the house is empty and we are paying the mortgage each month, as well as rent on our home - we cannot sustain this for much longer.

 

Is there anything we can do about this? We are desperate for the sale to proceed so that we can purchase a home of our own to give our children some security!

[rdm2006]

this may help you.

 

Myth about charging orders

 

your solicitor may not know that a "restriction" is not a charging order and does not need to be "paid off" as a charging order would, from what i can see he only needs to advise the beneficiary (of the charging order/restriction) that a transfer is taking place and confirm to the land registry that he has done this.

 

The land registry should then proceed without further problems

Edited August 21, 2013 by rdm2006