Welcome to the forum lucy.

When your partners ex-wife signed the trust deed her assets vested in her Trustee. That basically means that the value of her assets will need to be paid over to help repay her creditors.

Her assets include her share of the equity (if it exists) in each of those two properties. Your partners share of any equity is his and will not be used to pay her debts.

She will need to pay over the value of her share of any equity in either or both of those properties one way or another. If there is no other way to do it, there is some potential for one or both of the properties to be sold.

Could you tell us whether you believe there is equity in either of the properties, and how much there would be in each (if any)? That will help us to give you a little more information about what might happen.

Your partner does have some rights in this situation as well.

There is no reason why your partner should have been informed about the trust deed before it was signed and no barrier to his ex-partner signing the trust deed. The trustee involved cannot sell the properties without either the permission of your partner, or a court order. Whether this would be sought would depend largely on how much equity is in the properties.

If there is equity there then it might not be a bad idea for your partner to get some specialist legal advice.

Thank you for your replies.

There is no equity in his ex-partners house, and there is maybe around 20k equity in the one he abides in.she has accumulated £38.000 In Debts and pays roughly £230 a month to TD.

another question - If my partner decided to rent his house out would that affect her trust deed? or his new tenant? especially if he isn't generating any profit from renting it out..

Hi lucy.

There may be an issue for your partner if there is £20000 of equity in the jointly owned home he resides in. His ex-partners share of that equity will have vested in the Trustee who will want to gather that for the benefit of creditors.

However, it's worth remembering that valuations used for trust deeds are often lower than people expect so the issue may not turn out to be as significant as it currently seems. We also dont know what will happen with property prices going forwards.

I cannot see any problem with renting the property out at this time, though the issue with equity and how it will be dealt with will arise in the future if it is believed that equity exists. That could have implications for your partner and the tenant in some circumstances.

As Kevin mentioned before, your partner may well wish to take legal advice on this situation as he has rights as well.