Selling property after divorce

I have power of attorney for an elderly friend who is now in a nursing home.
He owns a house, which needs to be sold to pay for his care fees.
The problem is, during his divorce settlement several years ago, he kept the house, and paid his ex wife a lump sum, and she''s also owed more money should he pass away or the house be sold. This is stated as a charge on the property.
To pay her this money he took out equity release.
At the time of the settlement, the ex wife made things very difficult at the family court, and would not sign any papers, a judge had to sign on her behalf.
Now the house has a buyer, it has been empty for almost 2 years, and the conveyancing company have had to get in touch with the ex wife to find out how to pay the remaining money. Yet again she is making things difficult by not co operating, and the conveyancing company are saying the house can not be sold unless she signs forms to release the charge. She was not named on the mortgage and hasn''t been since the divorce.
The previous solicitor who handled the divorce did say she doesn''t need to sign anything to enable the house to be sold, and a court can hold the money on her behalf until she arranges to collect it, but the conveyancing company say otherwise - she needs to sign and court won''t hold any money - therefore the house can''t be sold without her co operation.
Can anybody offer any advice? We will be consulting the solicitor but obviously we don''t want to delay the house sale as the longer this goes on, the more interest our friend has to pay both to the equity release and to the ex wife.

One quick, but crucial, question. Who is the legal owner of the house, the registered proprietor ? Is the house still in joint names ?

LMM

Thank you for your response Mike.
The house is in my friends sole name, as part of the divorce settlement, the ex wife''s name was removed.
Unfortunately also, the buyer has now confirmed they are pulling out as it has taken too long.
I''m very annoyed with Countrywide about this, they were doing the conveyancing and were the ones holding things up for the ex wife.
The ex wife had told them they could not sell the property, she was going to get her own legal advice, despite us telling Countrywide she has no say in the matter legally and she can''t hold up the sale.

I suspect I know what is going on here.

OK, so the house is in your friend''s sole name. This means, on the face of it, he is entitled to sell, he can make title and normally the ex would not be able to stop it.

But what I suspect may be the case here is something like this. The ex wife may well have a charge on the property to secure her share. This is necessary to prevent the spouse who is the owner selling it, doing the proverbial bunk. and keeping the lot.

Normally spouses who have the dubious benefit of a charge on the property which is not realisable for some time ( it''s usually the man ) count the days till they can get their sticky hands on the money and are only to happy to release the charge. To refuse to release the charge out of sheer spite is so rare that I doubt whether a lawyer could be held negligent for failing to appreciate and make provision for such a possibility.

The problem is, a buyer isn''t going to want to buy the house if there is a charge over it in favour of a third party. So the charge has to be released and only the person entitled to the benefit of the charge can release it.

But if she''s done this once she can do it again, so the first question I''m going to ask your friend is whether the order contains a provision with the words '' liberty to apply '' . If it does, then I think the answer is for your friend to apply to the Court for Directions , which would give the judge the power to release the charge on payment of the money into Court.

However it is impossible to advise with precision without seeing the documents. I''d say the conveyancer, in a way, was right, but I don''t think the ex can or should be allowed to block the sale indefinitely. But a conveyancer may not know much about divorce.

LMM

Thank you, that is very helpful. I will check the paperwork.
My friend is not in a position to look after his affairs, as he''s unfortunately now confined to a nursing home after having a stroke.

Myself and another hold financial power of attorney for him, and it is very frustrating that his ex wife is doing this when he is in very poor health and needs to pay for his nursing home fees...but then we are learning every day!

Thanks again.

Yes it does state liberty to apply.

Hi again everyone.

I wanted to let you all know an update, maybe people might have some good suggestions.

After the above posts, we have since consulted a solicitor to send an affadavit to the court to request their help to remove the charge off the property, to hold the ex wife''s money and then she would be able to claim it at whatever date she wishes.

Dated on the 28th Jan, the court sent a letter to the solicitors to say a hearing had been booked on the 4th Feb. The letter didn''t arrive at the solicitors until the 30th, then it was the weekend, so a letter was only sent to the ex wife informing her of the hearing three days before.

At the hearing she doesn''t turn up, but her daughter and her daughter''s boyfriend do (I was unhappy the boyfriend was present as this has nothing to do with him whatsoever).

The daughter said her mother could not be present due to ill health, the judge asked her what her ill health was - poor mobility, anxiety, high blood pressure as since the divorce (8 years ago, that she initiated) "she was left homeless with her child''....her child at the time was 17 and at college...and we said "yes homeless with 30 grand in her pocket!"

She also said that the hearing letter only arrived that morning at 9am, and they had to travel from London on a bus. This was now 1230, a bus from London to here is 3 hours. I pointed out that they did very well to achieve that in a short space of time!
The judge looked at his watch.

She also requested that the hearing be transferred to closer to her home address in London, 80 miles away from where we are.

She also said that the ex wife had no idea what the hearing was about, and in regards to releasing the charge she only received 2 letters. We explained to the judge that she had been contacted by telephone and post via the conveyancing company and she had been very obstructive.

Before christmas, the estate agents telephoned us, to say that she had come into the shop, to demand to know why the house was being sold as it was "her house" and we had no right selling it. And was asking why it was being sold. Obviously they couldn''t say.
Numerous times, we have heard she has been asking questions about the house, about our friends state of health, to other people we know, and time and time again we have said to people just ask her to call us and we can tell her what she wants to know.
Yet she will not call. We have not been unreasonable at all, we just want the house sold for our friend who can''t look after his own affairs anymore.

Anyway, the judge said there''s no reason why the ex wife can''t sign papers. Anxiety is not a good enough reason not to sign them. He advised they get their own legal advice. And he scheduled a hearing for 3 weeks time but, as there is a resolution to this, he''s hoping we can cancel it.

We have a week to send out all the relevant information and paperwork to the ex wife, which we did by registered post. She has received it.
Then she has a week to sign the papers and return them.
If she doesn''t we will continue with the next hearing.

Now, our grievance is that since this could have been sorted out since last october, our friends interest bills are a grand more.
And we received word today that the buyer for the house has pulled out due to it taking so long.
Finding another buyer at the price we had agreed on is going to be difficult, and soon our friend will make no money at all from the house sale as it''s been eaten up by equity release, paying off the ex wife and legal aid.

The other thing that had really got my goat was that on the day of the hearing, we had told the daughter that our friend was ill in hospital, his health is very bad at the moment. After the hearing I heard from the hospital he could go home, so I went to his care home to gather some clean clothes for him to travel in, only to be told by the staff that a young couple came in claiming to be his son, with an older lady who fitted the description of the ex wife who apparently could not travel from London to the hearing due to her ill health!!
Even though its county court is that still contempt or what? The daughter lied that her mother couldn''t make it!

What can we do, is there anything we can do, I know complaining to the judge won''t help but surely they need to know she''s been lying and deliberately being obstructive for whatever reason?