Flat to rent - disagreement

[16 Sirius]

Hi! I would be grateful if you could advise on the following.
I and my husband are owners of a flat in London, no mortgage on the flat. We lived in London from 2006 till 2017. We both live in Slovakia, married in 2009, have 3 children born 2008, 2010, 2014. We are divorcing, the divorce is not progressing. I filed divorce in 2018. We bought this flat in 2013 after selling our first flat which we bought in 2011. We applied for joint mortgage in 2011, the mortgage was paid off in summer 2015.

The flat was rented out since we left UK, from Nov 2017-Sept 2020 under estate agent management. The tenants terminated contract in June 2020. My husband did not give permit for further rent of the flat. I was happy to continue with rent of the flat, as we both have a nice income from the rent. Because of lack of mutual agreement on the rent, the flat is unoccupied since Sept 2020. Monthly bills for an empty flat are 600-700gbp/month average. I am now in hard situation, where I am loosing an income which was blocked by my husband and I have to pay half of the bills.

Is there any way how to force my husband to rent the flat? Or at least how to exclude me from the bill payments?

Many thanks for your advice. If you have any questions, I am happy to answer.

[efpom]

On the facts you describe, I cannot think of any legal process under English law which would force one of two joint owners of a property to rent out the property when the other joint owner does not wish to do that. I assume that absent any agreement between you and your creditors as to who pays for the outgoings on the property, you would be jointly an probably severally liable to pay those debts i.e. the creditors can go after payment from either of you.

The situation may be different under the law of Slovakia - I assume that the divorce proceedings are in the Slovakian courts. If that is right, you may wish to speak to the lawyer I assume is handling your divorce proceedings.