You are entitled to a single occupier discount. Your partner will need to provide a certificate to the local authority confirming he is a full-time student, at which point you will become entitled to the discount which is 25 per cent of your Council Tax bill.

You will only be entitled to that discount while your partner remains a full-time student and once he completes his course and leaves full-time education he will need to inform the Council of his new situation.

Stamp Duty Land Tax is payable on any consideration payable for an interest in land.
While no money is actually changing hands in this example, there is a substantial consideration being made by your new wife. At the present time the property is in your sole name with you being solely liable for the existing mortgage. What is being proposed is that the new mortgage, albeit for the same amount, will be the responsibility of both of you and in respect of which the property is being transferred into your joint names.

In other words, your wife is receiving one half of your property in return for her becoming liable for one half of the mortgage debt (despite the fact that you will both be jointly and severally liable for the debt in any event). In this instance there is effectively a consideration made by your wife of one half of the mortgage debt in return for her receiving a one half interest in your property.

Sadly, in your case, as your mortgage is substantial, one half of the mortgage debt amounts to £147,500, which is in excess of the Stamp Duty threshold of £125,000 and, accordingly, a Stamp Duty charge of 1% of the consideration (£1,475) will be payable

One thing you can always guarantee is that when somebody intends to make a Will they will claim it is straightforward and simple. If this were the case then it would be perfectly in order for everyone to simply draw up their Will on the back of a cigarette packet. However, half an hour with a Lawyer specialising in Will drafting will identify many aspects that you may not have considered.

You may well have a good idea of what you want to leave – and to whom - but it is the provisions within the Will that take into account certain unforeseen circumstances or, in particular, people dying in the wrong order, which can often be critical.

Ensuring that provision is made for surviving children, even if you do not have any at the time of making your Will, along with the appointment of Guardians for young children, ensuring that your share of any joint matrimonial assets will actually end up with any children from your first marriage, (and similarly for your wife), and above all else your specific wishes recorded in a legally binding document are all critically important. Do yourself a favour – and consult a specialist to draw up your Will.

No, there is no need for you to make any changes unless you particularly want to. The title to the property will no doubt be registered at the Land Registry and all you need to do in the event of a future re-sale is to produce a certified copy of your marriage certificate showing the change in the name of the female spouse from her maiden name by way of proof that the parties are one and the same as those registered on the title.

You can, of course, forward a certified copy of your marriage certificate to the Land Registry, but this will need to be accompanied by a formal application form with which you are not familiar and which you may need to pay a Solicitor to complete on your behalf. Quite frankly, this is a total waste of money and is not essential.

What may be more important, since your marriage, is to review the manner in which you own the property. Had you bought the property as partners, the property may be registered in your joint names as Tenants in Common rather than Joint Tenants in which case you will now need to make Wills should you wish to ensure that the property will definitely pass automatically to the surviving spouse. Indeed, a Will, now that you are married, is something you should consider in any event.

It is not illegal for anyone to open your mail. It is certainly discourteous, but not illegal. You should have arranged for all your mail to be forwarded to your new address through the Royal Mail Redirection Service so that the only mail that would continue to be delivered to the property is junk mail.

Any subsequent mail received at the property could either be binned, opened, or destroyed by either the new occupant, or the Landlord and you would be none the wiser. One always relies on the integrity of either new occupiers or former Landlords to forward unopened mail, but of course there is no obligation on anyone to do so and certainly not for any indefinite period.

Prenuptial Agreements are a little mercenary and can cause suspicion from the outset which is not always good for one’s relationship! On the other hand, the property issue can be simply addressed by your fiancé’s parents taking a charge on the property for the amount that they provided.

However, this will imply that the purchase monies were not a gift and that monies remain owing to your fiancé. This may not be appropriate if it was intended that the property should be a gift from your fiancé’s parents and if this gift had been made some years ago then it may only be a matter of years before the value of the gift falls outside the Estate of your fiancé’s parents and therefore will represent a tax effective lifetime gift of their assets.

If a charge were taken over the property then it is a matter for your fiancé’s parents as to whether they would require that loan to be repaid, but in the event of your separating then it is recorded that the funding for the property came from your fiancé’s parents and that you made no direct contribution to the acquisition of the property.

What your ordinary entitlement would be in any divorce settlement is then entirely down to those criteria that are appropriate in any divorce proceedings.

The rules for dealing with more than one Buyer are strict. There is nothing to stop more than one contract being issued by your Solicitor, but he must make it clear to other prospective buyers that contracts have simultaneously been issued to others.

If you cannot decide between your prospective buyers and you wish to give them all an opportunity to proceed on a “first come first served” basis, then this will amount to a “contract race”. This is hardly ideal as far as a buyer is concerned, but it is the only way that you as the Seller can secure the best possible price from a buyer wanting to proceed at the earliest opportunity.

It will need to be made perfectly clear to all three prospective buyers as to the basis on which you intend to select the successful buyer - such as the first person to be in a position to unconditionally exchange contracts will secure the property.

Any specific requirement as to the payment of a deposit to facilitate such exchange must also be made perfectly clear to all parties to ensure all three buyers have an equal opportunity to secure the property. It is then literally the first person to satisfy the exchange criteria who will secure the property

South Wales has a number of properties that were originally leasehold but as the years have passed occupiers have purchased the freehold interest. It is often the case that on acquiring the freehold the freehold title will be registered separately to avoid having to merge the two interests and pay a higher Land Registry fee. This gives rise to potential difficulties if the property was originally in the sole name of one only of the spouses.

In this case that spouse has since died and the surviving spouse has purchased the freehold interest in her sole name. This leaves the freehold interest in the wife’s name and the leasehold interest in the late husband’s name.

A Grant of Representation will be required for each Estate in order to properly deal with the interests in the property that the respective spouses owned. This will deal with the deceased husband’s leasehold interest in the property. It will not take too long, but will inevitably delay any ongoing sale.

You are never sure when contracts are likely to be exchanged and a completion date agreed but, naturally, it is not a good idea to be abroad when you are due to complete.

However, in order to facilitate an exchange of contracts in your absence you can either visit your Solicitor before leaving for your business trip and sign all documentation well in advance - leaving strict instructions as to the basis on which the Solicitor is authorised to proceed in your absence - or you may grant a Lasting Power of Attorney dealing with your Property and Affairs, restricting the authority to the appointed Attorney to simply deal with the signing of all documentation relating to your purchase of your new property.

Unless there are major outstanding items on which your Solicitor will need your specific instructions, or indeed no papers have in fact been received before you go away, then it is normal for you to give your Solicitor strict instructions as to the basis on which you would be happy to proceed.

If you are only buying a property and are in no hurry to move in, then ensure your Solicitor has the relevant amount of money made available to him to allow him to complete on your behalf if you are still abroad.

Unfortunately, your father died without making a Will and his spouse had predeceased him. In the absence of a Will he will be deemed to have died Intestate. In an Intestacy, assets will pass in accordance with the Intestacy Rules which is an attempt to anticipate what a Testator would have done had he made a Will. The order of beneficiaries entitled will dictate who is entitled to his Estate.

As he died a widower, but leaving children, then ALL of his children will share his Estate equally. Sadly, despite not having seen anything of his other children for over 40 years they are undoubtedly his children, just as you are. Therefore, all three of you will be entitled to share your father’s Estate equally.

In other words all three of you are entitled under the Intestacy Rules and his two sons need not necessarily make a claim against his Estate as they are absolutely entitled in any event. This is different to two estranged sons who suddenly make a claim against an Estate where there may have been a Will leaving everything to you.

In those circumstances their claim would not succeed unless they could show that they were dependants of your late father and, after no contact in 40 years, this would be impossible to prove. It is examples such as this which emphasises the importance of making Wills - particularly if you have children by a previous marriage or previous relationship.