Hi gillianr2,

The house could be sold, though your husband's trustee and mortgage lender would need to authorise any sale. If there is negative equity then it is possible that your mortgage lender may choose not to allow the sale unless they were in control of it (ie the property was surrendered for them to sell), though not necessarily (your trustee would probably liaise with them to agree on a way forward). Any shortfall sue to the mortgage lender would fall under the trust deed alongside the rest of your unsecured creditors.

Please also bear in mind that if your husband's housing costs drop significantly as a result of moving to a tenancy then it is likely that his contribution to his trust deed will rise accordingly.

Hi Gillianr2 and welcome to the forum

In addition to the above you could do a voluntary repossession and hand the keys back to the lender. The lender would sell the property and the shortfall would fall as a claim in his Trust Deed as long as the property sold prior to the conclusion of his Trust Deed.

Can I ask how your husband managed to get in to arrears with the mortgage? Or were the arrears in place when he signed the Trust Deed? He should have been allowed sufficient funds every month to allow him to pay the mortgage and any arrears, if they were in place before he signed the Trust Deed.

Julie

Thanks for the info. The arears are made up of short payments he had to make due to loss of job. He has a job now but the pay is much less than before and the trustee is trying to sort out the monthly payments so they can be lowered for a while. We understand that this will mean the trust deed will need to be extended. Part of wanting to move to a cheaper property is to bring the trust deed payments back up so that the trust deed wont have to be extended.

He doesn't want to hand the keys back as he is scared of repsossesion. He would rather it "looked" like we were welling it ourselves iykwim? We live in a small village and he doesn't want everyone knowing our business.

I guess the problem may be how would you pay for the cost of marketing and selling the property?

That would be a major problem for us. It's all such a mess, feel worse off now in a way than we were before the TD.

Hi gillianr2,

I can understand how the change of circumstances that was experienced has put pressure on mortgage and trust deed payments.

I also understand the complications attached to living in a smaller community.

In general housing should be prioritised over other types of debt repayments (including trust deed payments).

Have you had an open and frank conversation with your trust deed company about the wider situation?