Variation of court order regarding Family Home

Our Court Order was granted in April 2010. I was awarded the marital home as part of the settlement on the proviso that I remove my ex from the mortgage by August 2011 when my youngest child completed her sixth form Education. I applied to do that but was turned down by the mortgage company due to a bad credit history as I had got myself into debt following the separation, due to having cancer at the time and also being made redundant. I was also awarded a lump sum to clear my debts but the history is still on my credit file. My ex agreed to allow us to remain in the property for a further year and is now pressuring me to sell the house and remove him from the mortgage. I''ve once again applied to my current mortgage lender and also a mortgage broker but the only mortgage he could offer me would cost me almost £1000 a month which I can''t afford. I have been paying the mortgage on my own for about 4 or 5 years now and have not missed a single payment. At the time of negotiating the settlement my ex told the court he would not be able to get another mortgage while he remained on our joint one. However as soon as the Court Order was issued him and his partner jointly bought a 4 bedroomed property which they moved in to in August 2010. The marital home is also 4 bedroomed and I live here with 2 of my children (aged 23 and 19). The 19 year old is at university. I only have enough equity in the property to buy a small 2 bedroomed property if that and I was wondering if I would have any luck in applying for a variation to the court order to allow us to remain in the family home until my youngest completes her university education. I did try to get this agreed at the time of the settlement but he point blank refused and I have approached him again recently and his reply is that he doesn''t care about anything except having his name removed from the mortgage.
I realise my 23 year old can''t be taken into consideration but she has a low paid job and can''t afford to move out on her own. I also feel all this is very unsettling for my youngest daughter and am conscious of needing to provide an adequate and stable environment for her to complete her studies.

My initial reaction is one of surprise, frankly.

The situation you describe - namely a wife being allowed to remain in the FMH but the husband remains liable to the lender on mortgage charged on a house he no longer owns - ( from the point of view of the husband ) depressingly common and there is nothing that can be done about it, because the Court can''t order a lender to release a former mortgagor.

Almost as soon as I started work in a legal office I was told that you NEVER give an undertaking unless you are 101% certain you can deliver on it. If you fail to honour an undertaking you are in the sugar and no mistake.

I would never have advised you to agree to a clause along the lines you mention. What I would like to ask you is this : is it possible for you to pm me with a copy of the order ? I don''t need the names or addresses and that sort of thing but would be definitely interested in the wording.

LMM

Oh and another thing ; if I were a judge I would not have approved a Consent Order with a clause like that in it.