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If you are married and divorcing, you might want to sell the house or flat in which you and your partner currently live. But if they refuse to give consent for the sale then you might face some significant obstacles, and in some cases, it could be impossible to get a buyer. The guide below outlines when you can sell a home without a partner’s consent, and options for doing so.
- Can I sell my house without my husband or wife’s consent?
- Defining the ownership of your property is crucial
- Steps your partner might take to try blocking the sale of your home
- Forcing the sale of a house or flat that you and your partner jointly own
- Options for selling your home if you can do without your partner’s consent
- Questions and answers about selling a home without the consent of a partner
Can I sell my house without my husband or wife’s consent?
Issues about consent for selling a house or flat, whether it’s freehold or leasehold, typically arise when a couple owns a home but they are divorcing or otherwise experiencing a major change in their personal situation.
A husband might want to sell the home but the wife might want to keep it, or a wife might want to sell the property using a method that the husband opposes. These are just two examples of the many different complicated outcomes that can happen when one person in a marriage attempts to find a buyer for their home without the other partner’s explicit consent.
It’s also important to note that the limits on selling a home without a husband or wife’s consent also applies to civil partnerships, so all homeowners should study the rules closely. In particularly acrimonious divorces or other separations where the partner does not want to leave the shared home, they might try to pursue litigation in an effort to block the sale.
You are allowed to find a buyer for your shared property without your partner’s consent in the event that they do not qualify as a joint owner of the house or flat. If the title deeds and other official documents for the home only list your name then you qualify as a sole owner, and you are exempt from having to get your partner’s consent before you try to sell your home.
Defining the ownership of your property is crucial
Being a sole owner gives you significant flexibility to proceed how you would desire, whether that is selling the home, re-mortgaging it, renting it out, or any other approach you’d like to take.
Yet if the home is designated as being under joint ownership between you and your partner, these flexibilities do not apply and you might struggle to be able to sell your house or flat if you cannot get the explicit consent from your partner to proceed with trying to find a buyer.
Being able to legally define the ownership of the home is crucial before you try to sell it. Check whether it’s just you, or both you and your partner, that are registered as the owner or owners of the property with HM Land Registry, which registers home ownership in England and Wales. This can give you a clear statement on ownership that most courts are likely to recognise in any litigation.
Also look to see whether you have any correspondence or other documents that clearly state the agreement that you and your partner made about ownership of your home. In some cases, partners might disagree on what they thought was the true state of ownership. This might unfortunately result in a court having to intervene to make the final decision.
If your partner is refusing to consent to the sale of the home and also trying to claim some ownership of the property, they might be able to bolster their case if they can prove that they have paid for improvements to the home such as a renovation of extension, or if they have put money toward the monthly mortgage payments if you have a mortgage on your home. This could be enough to at least give them a share of the proceeds you could make from a sale.
Should you have a very complex situation in terms of defining the ownership of your home, you might need to ask a legal professional although this is not something everyone can afford.
Steps your partner might take to try blocking the sale of your home
The first step that your partner might use in trying to block the sale of your shared property is to simply refuse to do so, and if you have equal joint ownership of the home then this will severely limit your options. It’s recommended that if this is the outcome you should try to negotiate with your partner, perhaps through a third-party mediation, on acceptable terms for a sale.
If you are the sole owner of the home, your partner might still try to file litigation claiming certain rights to the property if they can demonstrate that they have made important financial contributions to the house, such as making some of the monthly mortgage payments. But your goal should always be to avoid having the situation end in court if at all possible.
Your partner might also contact HM Land Registry with a claim for "home rights" that would let them continue to live in the property for a certain amount of time. This can happen in bitter divorces if one partner is trying to quickly sell the home and move on but the other wants to remain in the house or flat.
A home rights notice means that if you attempt to rent, re-mortgage or sell the home without your partner’s consent, solicitors for any lenders or buyers will be notified about this dispute and as a result any sale or new mortgage loan could not complete until the dispute is resolved.
That means it’s in your best interests to avoid ending up in this situation, and you should work to try and find terms through which you and your partner can agree to sell the property.
Forcing the sale of a house or flat that you and your partner jointly own
For those people who can clearly prove through title deeds and other legally recognisable documents that they are the sole owner of a home, and that the partner has not contributed anything financially to the property through mortgage payments or other ways, you should be able to force the sale of the home on your own schedule using whatever option you’d like.
But you have joint ownership or joint tenancy of a house or flat, or joint tenancy, you might feel frustrated that you have few options to push ahead with the sale of your home. However, there are still a few ways that you might be able to force through your effort to find a buyer.
Your first attempt should be to try negotiating with your partner to see if there are terms that they could agree to for a sale. They might not want to sell because they object to the method of selling that you would like to use, or they have some other fixable issue with your approach to selling the home. Divorces can be a very stressful and angry time for both partners, and that’s why you might need you legal representatives to handle these potentially contentious talks.
But if you can come to an understanding on the sale then this is one way that you can ensure it ultimately happens. Your options include offering to buy out their share of the property, sell your share of the home to them, and other steps that you might currently be considering.
Property Disputes, a website providing free information on fights over homeownership in the UK, notes that in the event that you and your partner are currently joint tenants of a property, and your partner does not consent to selling it, then you can try to sever the joint tenancy. This means that you would break the existing tenancy agreement and now be known as tenants in common, which would end your partner’s automatic right to your share of the property in the event that you die. Simply changing the terms of the tenancy agreement can be enough to force a reluctant partner to finally agree to the sale, but it naturally only applies in tenancy agreement situations.
Another option for forcing the sale of a jointly owned house is applying to a court for an order that gives you the right to sell the house or flat. You can do this in situations where you and your partner equally and jointly own the home and the only dispute that you are having is over whether to sell it. If you do apply for such an order, you can even have the court agree to provide a signature for any of the papers involved with selling in lieu of needing your partner’s signature.
In some situations, once your partner receives a formal letter from your solicitor that you have started the court order process, this can be enough to make them finally consent to a sale. That’s because even if your partner is willing to fight you over selling the home, they might not have the desire or resources for that dispute to end up in formal litigation.
But if your case unfortunately ends up in court, be sure to prepare extensive documentation showing that you have tried every possible option for trying to win your partner’s consent for selling the home. The court will eventually schedule a hearing on your case and weigh the claims of both sides before hopefully issuing an order allowing you to sell the property.
It’s possible that even at this late stage your partner might still reach out through their solicitor asking you to settle the case and agreeing to whatever approach you both find acceptable for selling the house or flat, which would obviate the need for winning the court order.
Options for selling your home if you can do without your partner’s consent
If you have assessed your situation and found that you have the permission to sell your house or flat without your partner’s consent, the next step is deciding which method of selling you would like to use. Your choices are selling through a property auctioneer, selling through an estate agent, or selling to a reputable fast home buyer such as LDN Properties.
Selling your home through a property auctioneer
A property auctioneer will develop a listing for your house or flat including its history and statistics, and use that to advertise your home ahead of the auction in order to generate interest in it. You might find that you have to potentially wait several weeks between the date on which you first enter your home for sale in an auction and the date on which the auction takes place.
The auctioneer will work with you to decide a minimum opening reserve price for your home. This is the lowest value at which you are comfortable with your home selling. But it is often set at a level below the amount you actually want or need for the sale, because the goal is to entice many people with the low price to want to bid on your property, so that they try to outbid each other on the day of the auction and push the final sale price to a much higher level. However, this might not happen so be prepared for having to settle for only receiving the opening bid.
Some people like auctions because a winning high bid is considered to be a legally binding agreement to buy a property, so it gives homeowners some certainty about selling.
There can be some additional delays involved with this process after a successful sale whilst the required legal paperwork for selling your home is completed. So it’s not the speediest method of selling, but can be faster than trying to sell a house through an estate agent.
You will however have to pay auctioneers fees for doing their work in selling your home, and these will have to be deducted from whatever final sale price you are able to get for the property. But you might be able to require that the winning high bidder pays these fees.
Selling your home through an estate agent
Alternatively, you might want to consider using an estate agent to sell your home. When you first contact an estate agent about selling your property, they might give you an inflated predicated sale price even though they secretly know that your home will only sell at a lower value. They do this in a bid to impress you and get your business, because they get paid commission if they sell your home. To prevent against being tricked this way, get quotes from a number of estate agents and compare them to get a better understanding of the likely true sale value of your home.
If you agree to sell your home through an estate agent, they will put together a listing that provides information for buyers on the size of your home, the number of rooms, and all other possible features of interest. The listing will also include photographs of your property that are designed to make it look as good as it can. The estate agent will advertise this listing online, in local newspapers, in their office, and anywhere else that it might be seen by potential buyers.
Estate agents also handle the work of taking people on viewings of your home, where people who might be interested in buying the property get to tour the interior and exterior. Note that some homeowners find that viewings are annoying and take up a lot of their time.
Should you get an offer on your property, an estate agent will charge you commission for the work that they did in finding you a buyer.
Selling your home to a reputable fast home buyer
Launched in 2003, LDN Properties is a fast home buyer that gives divorcing partners perhaps the swiftest option for selling their houses or flats. Our approach to making quick and competitive offers to buy properties is straightforward, no-stress and hassle-free.
We can generally complete the purchase of each home within a few short weeks, and that includes the time that it takes to pay you the proceeds and exchange contracts. We think this is much faster than the average time you can expect to wait if trying to sell your home through an estate agent or a property auctioneer, which can often both take a few months at a minimum.
And we also promise that you will never have to pay any fees if you sell your home to LDN Properties, because we have always believed that homeowners should get to keep all of the proceeds from selling their flats or houses. But estate agents and property auctioneers will make you pay potentially sizable fees that will reduce the total sale profit you can make.
Further, we can consider making fair and fast offers to buy the widest possible range of houses and flats. So even if the home that you and your partner share has any potential negative characteristics, we might still be able to buy it. Examples of the many types of freehold and leasehold homes that we have bought in the past include houses with structural integrity problems such as dry rot or subsidence, homes that are lacking Energy Performance Certificates or other crucial documentation, properties with mortgage arrears, flats with short leases remaining, homes located under noisy airport flight paths or near railway stations, houses where the invasive species Japanese knotweed has been detected, and more.
We are very proud of our long list of happy customers who have sold their homes to us quickly. Start the process of selling your house or flat by calling our team of friendly experts. Within the first hour of talking we should be able to make you an initial offer, and there is absolutely no pressure to immediately accept it because we’ll give you a full week to consider the offer.
If you accept our initial offer, one of our representatives will then assess the exterior and the interior home in person before we make a final offer. And if you accept the offer, all that’s left is for us to finalise the various legal documents before we can successfully complete the sale.
Questions and answers about selling a home without the consent of a partner
Homeowners looking to sell their house without the consent of their partner often have a number of questions for us, ranging from how long it takes to sell a house through to specific queries about selling a house without the consent of their partner. Here are some of the leading questions we are asked about selling property without the consent of a partner:
Your questions answered when selling without the consent of a partner
Joint ownership means that both partners have an equal stake in ownership of the house or flat, and that it is all but certain they must both consent before the home can be listed for sale. Sole ownership means that one of the partners is the only legally designated owner of a home, in which case they can try to sell or rent the home without getting their partner’s consent.
No, it depends entirely on which option you choose for trying to find a buyer for your home. Quick buyers like LDN Properties will never charge you any fees, which means you can retain the full proceeds from selling your home. Estate agents and auctioneers, by contrast, will charge you potentially significant commission that will reduce your net profit from the sale.
If you try to find a buyer through an estate agent you could be waiting for many months or even more than a year before your home sells. Auctioneers can be quicker but might also take possibly a few months for the entire process to complete. But LDN Properties can generally finalise the purchase of each home in a handful of weeks, including exchanging contracts.
In this situation, one partner cannot technically force the sale of a home, but there could still be options for selling it. For example, the partner who wants to sell could offer to buy the other partner’s share of the home. Or the couple could attempt to reach an agreement on selling. Otherwise, you might have to resort to litigation to try and force a sale in this situation.
If you have joint ownership of a home but your partner refuses to sell, you could pursue litigation in an attempt to force a court order mandating the sale of the property. But this can be a very expensive and lengthy process, so even if you eventually win an order to force the sale of your house or flat, you might still lose money in the end because of the costs of filing litigation.
A partner who is not a joint owner of a house can still register what are known as "home rights" with the UK government, which is an attempt to get a declaration that the partner has a right to continue living in the property for a certain amount of time – such as until a divorce is finalised. Although this can potentially slow down the sale of your home, it cannot ultimately prevent it.
