In this article, Lis Bradshaw looks at the legal minefield involved in housing those under eighteen years, particularly those leaving the care of Social Services. The article looks at solutions available to the landlord to ensure that, in the event of the arrangement failing, appropriate proceedings can be taken to recover the property.
Anyone under 18 is legally incapable of holding any sort of tenancy. They cannot hold a legal estate. However, they can hold a licence. This poses a difficulty for landlords when faced with an under 18 year old applicant or an under 18 year old who succeeds a tenancy.
What can the landlord do?
The legal estate/tenancy has to be held by an adult who will hold the same in trust for the young person. The young person will be the beneficiary under the trust. There is a further difficulty in that a young person cannot be sued without the court appointing an adult to receive the Claim Form and accompanying documents and deal with the court case on their behalf.
The worst case scenario is that a landlord could seek to grant a “tenancy” to a young person and that young person thereafter either not pay rent or causes a nuisance. That would then force the landlord to attempt to bring proceedings, which of themselves would be fraught with difficulties. The court would then no doubt seek to appoint the Official Solicitor to act on behalf of the young person which process can be slow and expensive.
To resolve the difficulties, the landlord will need to obtain a volunteer to act as trustee for every young person they accommodate.
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