Adding your wife/partner's name to the existing mortgage

Why is it a mistake?

You can buy her life cover anyway.

I really cant see the benefit of going to the hassle of it now. Just do a will too to be safe.

The cost/hasstle of adding your wife's name to the mortgage now, and after you pass, would be about the same, so no real advanatage, plus adding her now will need the lenders permission.

Just ensure you do a will, and get seperate life cover, and there is no real difference.

How did you manage to do this is in the first place? Is the marriage recognised in Ireland?

Being married infers legal rights to the spouse. Most if not all mortgage lenders will want to jointly assess a married couple for this reason.

In saying all that I don't see any benefit in adding her to the mortgage if you've already have one. Assuming you don't have a will that writes your wife out of your estate, she would be entitled to inherit the same share in the house regardless of her status on the mortgage. There shouldn't be any tax implications on the inheritance of a house from one spouse to the other either.

By all means take out a life policy for her but seeing as you already have a mortgage you don't need to assign it to the mortgage lender. The only reason to consider doing this is if you think you couldn't be trusted with the payout.

Op you can easily put your wife's name on the house it's called a voluntary transfer and your solicitor can do it easily for you. Or you could do a will transferring your interest in the house to her in the event of your death. If you don't do either of these things and you have children then in the event of your death your wife would get two thirds of the house and your children would inherit one third divided equally between them which is not ideal especially if they are under 18 at the time.

You can't add a name to a mortgage after executing the document. The mortgage is registered against the property and remains as is until the term expires or you buy it out early. If you plan to remortgage in the future you could make a joint application and of course buy joint life assurance. A good workaround to your issue would be to do a voluntary transfer which would put your wife's name on the title to your property and for your wife to take out take out a life insurance policy for the sum owing on the mortgage that would pay out to you in the event of her death. Your life assurance policy would pay out and clear the mortgage in the event of your death.

The wife is not automatically entitled to half simply by virtue of being married. She can veto a sale, that's all.

Its also possible your wife's name will not be on the deeds of the house if she isn't on the mortgage, although people have different opinions on this.

Make sure her name is on the deeds, otherwise it could be tricky in case of separation or death of one partner. You need to think of all eventualities.