***Legal Aid Queries****Help****

[ferdinand661980]

My question is this,

 

Who can I contact to investigate a legal aid application I believe to be false?

 

The situation is this,

 

I purchased a property in August 2005 with my ex-partner. The property was purchased with a joint 97% mortgage from the Halifax. The whole of the deposit was paid by myself out of my bank account, and whilst my ex-partner resided at the property, I paid the whole of the mortgage by direct debit from my bank account. My ex-partner vacated the property by her own choice in December 2005. Since June 2006 until now, she has been threatening to apply to the court for an order of sale. I have been attempting to have her name removed from the mortgage, but have failed up until now. I believe I will be successful in having her name removed shortly, but she is unwilling to wait further and is applying to the courts with legal aid funding. However, I know that since she began receiving legal aid, her personal circumstances have changed, whereby I now believe her legal aid application to be invalid. My question is who do I contact that can investigate the application? Also, if the matter did arrive at court, would I have a case to argue as she has not contributed towards the property financially since its purchase two and a half years ago? I also live in the property with my wife and have 2 dependants of hers (now mine!) living in the property too, would this be taken into consideration?

 

Any help on any of the questions would be hugely appreciated!!

[Mrsmancmonkey]

I dont know about the legal aid side and someone will be able to help shortly

 

Ways to Own Property Jointly

There are two types of joint ownership: joint tenancy and tenancy in common. A joint tenancy means that there is no direct split and all parties own the whole property. Therefore, if there are two owners, it means that both own 50 percent; if there are three, each one owns 33.33 percent and so on. This is the normal way that property is held and if one of the owners dies, the property automatically passes to the survivor(s), thus escaping any inheritance tax liability.

 

With a tenancy in common, each of the owners will own a set percentage of the property. This can be split in any way that is desired and is commonly used if different owners have put in different financial amounts.

 

Apart from using the amount of financial input as a way to determine shares, courts may also use any agreements that have been reached between the owners as well as any work that either party has done on the property during the time they lived there. Bear in mind that with the last point, the work done must be outside the ordinary work that you would expect to be carried out routinely when a couple own a property.

 

In the absence of any evidence to the contrary, the courts will presume that the property is held in equal share.

[Joa]

You need to contact her solicitor. The solicitor is the one who applies for funding on client's behalf. He or she would have originally assessed your ex-partner. You can also contact Legal Services Commission (LSC) which runs the legal aid scheme on their Customer Service number: 0800 085 6643