A reader writes:
I bought my house in Handsworth when I was thirty-six, a three-bed terrace with a damp back bedroom and a garden full of brambles. I was single, working at the depot and doing overtime whenever they offered it. I paid the deposit myself over four years and I was proud of it. When I met Denise at a church anniversary service two years later, she was renting a flat in Lozells with her two boys, then aged eight and eleven. We married eighteen months after that, and she and the boys moved in.
For the first year, it was my house. I did not say it like that, but it was. When Denise wanted to paint the front room, she asked me. When the boys broke the fence panel playing football, I said, in a voice I am not proud of, “that’s my fence”. I noticed Denise never put anything on the walls. Her photographs stayed on the chest of drawers in our bedroom, as if she might need to pack them quickly.
I did not think much of it until my own mother came to stay one Christmas. She sat in the kitchen with Denise and told her a story I had heard all my life but never really listened to. When my father died in Manchester, Jamaica, I was six. The house was in his name. Within a month of the funeral his brothers had come, very politely, to say that the house was family property and that she and the children would need to make other arrangements. She had kept that house for fourteen years. We went to live with her sister in two rooms. My mother told it without bitterness, and then she looked at me across the table and said, “Make sure no woman in your house has to go through that.”
That night I could not sleep. I realised that if I were knocked down by a bus, Denise’s position in the only home her boys had ever felt settled in would depend on paperwork I had never bothered to look at. I had no will. My brother is a decent man, but I did not want Denise’s security to depend on anyone’s decency.
So we went to see a solicitor. She explained, much more clearly than I can here, the different ways two people can own a home together and what happens to each person’s share if one dies. We talked through what would happen if, God forbid, the marriage broke down. We both made wills at the same time. I also went to the lender to understand what adding a name to the mortgage involved. It was more forms than I expected and it cost some money, but it was not complicated.
Not everyone agreed. A friend from work said I was mad: “You don’t put a woman’s name on your house till you’ve been married ten years.” A cousin asked whether I had thought about the boys getting the house one day instead of my own blood. I had. I have no children of my own, and those boys call me Dad now. But I do understand why people worry, and I will not pretend I had no doubts. There was a night, not long after we signed, when Denise and I had a proper row, and for a moment I thought, what have I done? That passed. It was the old fear, not a real one.
What changed afterwards surprised me. Denise started talking about “our kitchen”. The photographs came off the chest of drawers and went up the stairs, one per step, which I think is too many but I have not said so. The older boy, who had been very cool with me, asked if he could help me build a shed. I do not think he knew about the paperwork. I think he felt that his mother had stopped holding her breath, and so he stopped holding his.
I sometimes think about Ruth, a foreign widow with nothing, and Boaz who went to the city gate and did everything properly, in front of witnesses, so that no one could later question her place (Ruth 4). I am no Boaz. But I came to believe that loving my wife included doing the dull, official things that would protect her when I could not.
If you are a man who owned a home before you married, I am not telling you what to do. Every situation is different, and you need proper advice. But please do not leave it to chance, and please ask yourself honestly whether the woman you love feels like a resident or a guest.
— Winston, Birmingham
Editor’s note
Winston’s letter shows that ownership is not only a legal question but an emotional one. A spouse or stepchild can live in a house for years without ever feeling it is theirs. Whether or not a couple decide to share the title, two steps are worth taking in almost every case: each partner making a will, and both understanding exactly how the home is held and what would happen if one of them died. Those conversations can feel unromantic. As Winston’s mother knew, the lack of them can be devastating. A solicitor or attorney-at-law can explain the options where you live.
This article is general information only and is not financial, legal, tax or other professional advice. Please speak to a qualified professional about your own circumstances.
Reader letters may be edited for length and clarity, and names and identifying details are changed.
Visit our YouTube Community ↗