Why you need to consider it….

If you are separating or already separated and you own your property as joint tenants (see posts ‘joint tenancy‘ and ‘tenancy in common‘), you need to think what will happen if you die while you still own the property. In a few months’ time, when you have reached agreement on financial matters, something will happen to the property – it will be sold, or transferred to one of you, or you may even go on owning it jointly on agreed terms such as who lives in it, who is going to pay the mortgage, insure it and so on. In the meantime, if you die, and if the joint tenancy has not been severed, your share of the equity in the property is lost – your co-owner simply becomes the sole owner of the property.

If you sever the joint tenancy, you ensure that if you die your half share of the equity in the house goes to whoever you have left your estate to in your will (you have to have made a will, of course, otherwise the rules of intestacy apply).

The problem is that the same applies the other way round. If you sever the joint tenancy and then your co-owner dies before the house has been sold or transferred, you would regret having severed the joint tenancy because you would have deprived yourself of the right to become the sole owner of the property.