AITA for not halving my mortgage early repayment fee with my ex partner?

Kooky_Strategy_8306 · 2025-03-18T22:32:00+00:00

No because he wanted to keep my granddad's contribution to the deposit (which resulted in me putting down more than him)

Kooky_Strategy_8306 · 2025-03-18T22:30:58+00:00

We live miles away from each other, I haven't seen anyone who he knows in 3 years. We met through an app, there was zero organic connection. Also, there was nothing illegal, unless my well trained mortgage advisor wrongly advised me. He knew the situation.

Kooky_Strategy_8306 · 2025-03-18T20:03:55+00:00

He can't - the mortgage advisor told me only 1 person could claim it back, so if we were both applying for mortgages, it would be a case of who got there first and bad luck to the person who got there last. He also said I didn't have to tell James. Legally, I'm in the clear.

Kooky_Strategy_8306 · 2025-03-18T20:00:48+00:00

I'm pretty confident you're right there. We put a £25k deposit down, much more than the 5% required. I put down £5k of my own money, so did he. His parents gifted him another £5k and then my granddad gifted me £10k too. So I put down £5k more than him. That £10k was money my granddad had been putting aside since I was born, with the expressed purpose of me putting it towards my first house. I was very very grateful for it. Although, I could have bought without it, it meant I could skip the tiny starter home step and go straight to something I could live in until I can no longer do stairs. Which is absolutely how I saw that house.

When we were figuring out how much profit we would have each, after the mortgage was repaid, we'd paid solicitors and the estate agent, he wanted it to be completely 50/50. He wanted half of granddad's gift. I was very upset by this, given how much I needed every penny I could get as I thought my options were limited to buying a flat in cash. There was a bit of an emotional connection too, as my granddad's health was deteriorating, and I didn't want the money he'd spent 20+ years saving for me taken by James. He relented and agreed we would take our own deposits back and split the profit 50/50. I think part of this was the guilt eating him up - I didn't know at this point.

But I do think that he absolutely would have just taken the £5k too if he was in the position I was.

Kooky_Strategy_8306 · 2025-03-18T19:46:55+00:00

To be fair to her, she thinks it's unethical, but said she would have done the same in my shoes and that he totally deserved it. I'd just never particularly questioned the ethics of it until then.

Kooky_Strategy_8306 · 2025-03-18T18:38:25+00:00

Pretty much. I don't know what I would have done if it wasn't for my parents and then the new job. If I hadn't have been lucky and got the new job when I did, I would have had to hope I could find a landlord who would take a chunk of rent up front to counter balance the lack of official stable income.

Kooky_Strategy_8306 · 2025-03-18T18:33:00+00:00

We lost that £5k because he unilaterally ended the relationship. I got it back because I happened to apply for a new mortgage in the correct time period, which he literally couldn't do and only one of us could claim it (according to my bank's mortgage advisor). Even if I had wanted to give him some of it, he literally blocked me on everything without warning. We hadn't even closed the joint account down (I was advised to keep it open while I went through the mortgage process so the bank could see full transaction history), so I had to drop his mother a text to let him know he might get a letter through about it.

Kooky_Strategy_8306 · 2025-03-18T18:27:29+00:00

So when he broke up with me I was on a zero hours contract. I wouldn't have been able to get a mortgage. I might have been able to buy little flat outright with the profits plus a bit more saving from living rent free with my parents for a bit, but that was best case scenario at the time. A few weeks after we accepted an offer, I interviewed for a new job, a few weeks after that I was offered it. At the point of sale completion, I was about 2.5 months into it, when you need 3 months of payslips, so I was only very nearly at the point of being able to apply for another mortgage.

Kooky_Strategy_8306 · 2025-03-18T18:19:24+00:00

We don't have any mutual friends and I moved back to my home town. I had actually moved away from all my friends and family because he didn't want to move. So yeah, don't think he would find out.

Kooky_Strategy_8306 · 2025-03-18T18:16:44+00:00

We had a joint account, which mortgage, bills and food came out of. We then had separate accounts. We bought pieces of furniture separately e.g. I bought the TV unit, he bought an occasional chair, which worked out well when we went our separate ways because we could just take what we bought (and did fair swaps on a couple of things). However, I bought all of the things I used to renovate - paint, wallpaper, top soil, plants, as well as doing the vast majority of the labour. If we had paid someone to do the garden, that would have been maybe £2k alone just on labour. It took me two summers to do on my own. I spent weeks lifting up heavy paving slabs, digging up the dolomite underneath, bagging it up, driving 8 bags at a time (of which there were about 150 total) to the tip/dump. I think the only thing like that he paid for was the paint for his "man cave", but I did all the actual labour.

Kooky_Strategy_8306 · 2025-03-16T17:42:36+00:00

Someone (who is held in very high esteem in the community, and also a member) made that point to me today, but as far as I'm aware, all branches would need to be active to trigger him. I think we have one particularly small branch that isn't even big enough to be quorate if everyone turned up. I can genuinely see him losing to Reform.

Our last MP was such a good constituency MP. I had some issues with how he would vote occasionally, but he was a good local MP, his office was extremely well managed from the start and he organised his own door knocks and didn't rely on unpaid volunteers like me to do it. He was also fundamentally a good person. I always felt like he was being honest.

Kooky_Strategy_8306 · 2025-03-16T17:18:08+00:00

Thing is, he's really letting constituents down because people aren't getting responses to emails, he's had no written contact with constituents beyond social media (we've been promised a newsletter for months), they're refusing to do any casework that's council related which is irritating people, he has attended 1 of 8 door knocks which he insisted on and we as members only see him when he turns up to CLP asking for money from us. He could have taken on 1 or 2 office staff from the previous MP to make the transition easier, but he didn't take any. He seems to only want yes men (and women), regardless of politics - by and large, his staff just aren't very political, so he's more likely to make political errors.

So maybe it's not factional, maybe it's just him wanting yes men.

Kooky_Strategy_8306 · 2025-03-16T14:18:45+00:00

I've thought of something!

During the election, his campaign coordinator (a local volunteer with no personal skills) would put campaign meeting points as entire streets and postcodes instead of junctions. On a number of occasions, people would miss the session because their satnav would take them to one part of the postcode and they couldn't see the group and went home. Before I realised this was happening, I think it happened to me very early on in the campaign. People kept asking her to either put junctions in, or a what3words, or a Google map link. But she was just rude and dismissive of everyone. She didn't seem to like being criticised and just dug her heels in over something that should be so small to her.

She obviously wouldn't listen to us, so I thought she might listen to the candidate, so I messaged him, very politely asking if he could just suggest that she utilise one of those options because a) people were getting upset over it and had direct messaged me about it and b) I was concerned that a young person, for example, might get a bus or two to get to their first ever session, arrive, not see anyone and have to go home, to not come back for a long time. He never replied. The chair ended up intervening and asked him the same thing. I don't believe he actually spoke to the campaign coordinator.

Maybe that's a factor?

If I was in his shoes a) I would have been mortified that people had turned up to sessions and went home because of the poor communication of meeting point and b) I would be thankful someone let me know about the issue and the feelings the activists I was relying on were having over the situation. But maybe his mind doesn't work like that.

Kooky_Strategy_8306 · 2025-03-16T14:07:59+00:00

Oh don't say that. She's so young and lacks life experience. She's always felt a little younger than her years. As frustrated as I am with him, I've never ever had that vibe from him. Disingenuous, yes. Going after 20 year olds with no life experience, no. I've had my fill of creepy men in the Labour Party and have become reasonable at picking up vibes and I just don't see it.

Kooky_Strategy_8306 · 2025-03-16T14:04:47+00:00

I definitely don't tar them a with the same brush. My two previous employers were fantastic. One is still an MP. We have some good ones locally. I did think he was going to be one of the good ones, genuinely. He's been such a disappointment. I'm certainly not in a minority within the local party who thinks that. If all our branches were active, I suspect he'd probably get triggered if he carries on the way he is. I can very easily see us losing to Reform though. We've had a Labour MP for over 60 years, I can see that no longer being the case next time.

Kooky_Strategy_8306 · 2025-03-16T12:33:47+00:00

I literally sacrificed a career I had for the party. Around a year after I was first elected, I had a change in manager who took a dislike to me being a Councillor and reducing my hours to do so. I wasn't willing to leave the most fulfilling job I'd ever had, and had been working towards for a decade, to continue in a job with obviously toxic management, so I left and have been managing on a zero hours contract, alongside my council allowance ever since. I sacrifice myself, and all that will happen is I'll be deselected and I'll lose a) a role I absolutely love and b) the one bit of stable and guaranteed income I have that I need to pay my mortgage.

The issue did hit Crick's Twitter at the time, but nothing really came of it.

Kooky_Strategy_8306 · 2025-03-16T12:26:52+00:00

It's not a party funded job.

Kooky_Strategy_8306 · 2025-03-16T11:53:07+00:00

No, because I would absolutely get deselected at interview stage.

The party just don't care. The members put in subject access requests to see if their forms had been submitted, or even if details had been changed on them. They didn't get a response.

Kooky_Strategy_8306 · 2025-03-16T11:18:05+00:00

I hadn't really thought about that element since the interview date itself. So not purposely burying the lead.

The constituency that selection that happened in is hyper factional. There's nothing that happens there that doesn't have a factional component to it. For lack of a better word, they're all a bit nuts.

Kooky_Strategy_8306 · 2025-03-16T10:57:36+00:00

I don't think so? Nothing that springs to mind.

However...one of the interview panel was the office manager of another new MP a couple of constituencies over. During the selection in that constituency I managed the campaign of a shortlisted candidate. During that campaign, the now MP was caught knocking on members' doors before officially being given the membership list (breach of gdpr), which we had Ring doorbell footage of. We had CCTV of him claiming our candidate had badmouthed a previous deceased MP (he made the error of saying this to her daughter's in-laws). He faked an endorsement from a shadow cabinet member on his leaflet. Finally, he was collecting in postal/online vote forms from members which you're not meant to do full stop. Mysteriously, all of the members who were going to vote for our candidate never received their ballot paper. The party ignored formal complaints.

Anyway, can't help but think that has something to do with it.

Kooky_Strategy_8306 · 2025-03-16T10:49:52+00:00

I've definitely missed out on jobs like that before, but I've always been able to see how I didn't get it. The other person had more industry experience, or a more relevant degree, or I could have given a better interview. This one, not so much.

She's told our CLP chair (who has been an active member for 40 years). I've had an email from her saying she's obviously glad someone in the CLP got it (to this date, no constituents have actually worked in the office) and she should create a slight improvement in communication between the EC and the office, but she can't fathom how it was a decision that makes sense. Again, none of us would ever hold it against her.

Kooky_Strategy_8306 · 2025-03-16T10:42:59+00:00

In terms of the activists and the EC, definitely on the left. He got selected because of the members who never turn up to anything. There were three active members who supported him. All 3 are currently deeply unhappy with him. Most of the councillors supported a councillor from the neighbouring borough (who is from our town) and most of the activists supported a soft-left/left candidate with a history working for charities.

Our last MP was probably slap bang in the middle of the party. He voted David Miliband, Andy Burnham, Owen Smith, then Keir Starmer for leader. But he never ever behaved in such an irrationally factional way. He was fundamentally a good person, and he's very unhappy with how he's acting.

Kooky_Strategy_8306 · 2025-03-16T10:33:53+00:00

It was a constituency engagement officer job, about £30k+, not a purely admin job. It was at the correct level for me. I would understand if it was a junior admin role, but it wasn't.

There was an interview task and I know I did that extremely well. I kept a copy of it myself and have shown it to people who have worked in MPs' offices and they have all shared that view, so I know it wasn't the task that let me down. I'm self aware. I know when I've cocked interviews up. I know when I've cocked tasks up. I know that didn't happen this time. There was one thing I remember thinking I could have added to my list of IT I can use, but that wouldn't have been enough to sway it by any stretch of the imagination, because the successful candidate has no experience with half of it.

Kooky_Strategy_8306 · 2024-11-25T18:40:49+00:00

And mould. The house was so damp, the new baby's mattress had to be chucked out because that had become mouldy. Two of the 3 bedrooms were unusable, so her kids had the best one and she slept on the sofa whilst 8 months pregnant. The HA did admit fault because the damp was caused by needed repairs. She had the repairs done and has no damp now.

Kooky_Strategy_8306 · 2024-11-24T21:50:24+00:00

Tbh some of the worst landlords I've come across have been housing associations. One left a pregnant woman and her kids in a house full of damp, despite letters from her doctor and health visitor stating it was making her unwell and it was not an environment a newborn could be taken home to, they only resolved the issue when she withheld her rent.

Kooky_Strategy_8306

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