A couple almost lost their house after Halifax refused to recognise one of them had a non-binary title.
Parents-of-four Ruth Sabini-Roberts and G, 45, found their ‘dream five-bed home’ in Oswestry, Shropshire.
But the family was left devastated when they were told G’s ‘Mx’ title wouldn’t be accepted on their mortgage application.
Halifax has now been forced into a U-turn, paving the way for other non-binary customers to follow in their footsteps.
‘It is a flag in the sand for acceptance for trans and non-binary people’, G, whose legal name is Mx G C Sabini-Roberts, said.
The self-employed pair, who run an LGBTQ+ diversity and inclusion training business, said they had ‘pulled ourselves up from the poverty line over the last four years’.
Finding their £335,000 converted warehouse property ‘wasn’t easy’ but their broker was finalising the details last month following the formal offer.
They discovered Halifax would only accept ‘Mrs’ or ‘Miss’ as G’s title on the mortgage application on January 20 – despite their bank accounts and driving licences using Mx.
‘I think the Halifax need us…. I thought our mortgage had to be in the same name as the house purchase, the land registry, insurance etc’, G said.
‘We don’t have them all in place yet but they will all need to be in Mx, because it’s my legal name.
‘I thought “I can’t be their first trans/nonbinary customer”. I was scared that this might mean we lose the house, which we’ve already invested so much in.’
G added: ‘There was a bizarre period for a day or two in the middle of the battle when we were contacted to ask if they would accept a mortgage deed in the name “The Mx G C Sabini-Roberts”.
‘We found it hilarious and also bizarre, that they would consider an incorrect name with the title “The” and not my actual legal name with the title “Mx”. Needless to say, we refused it.
‘For what it’s worth, the title “Mx” has been in use since the 1970s and it has been included in the Deed Poll Service as a legal title since 2011.’
The couple was forced to lodge a formal complaint – and were finally told on February 2 that Lloyds Banking Group – the parent company of Halifax – had found a way to make the application go through.
A manual override procedure has been put in place, although G hopes Halifax ‘will be updating all their systems so that this doesn’t have to happen to anyone else’.
‘No one was unpleasant to us. We did not feel discriminated against.’ they added. ‘We did not have to fight to get them to take attention.
‘But we did have to stand our ground and refuse to accept anything other than my legal name.
‘Halifax recognized they had a problem, but they didn’t know how to fix it. We were lucky that we were not in a big chain. If we were, we could have lost our house because of the delays this has caused.’
A Halifax spokesperson said: ‘We’re pleased that we have been able to help Mx Sabini-Roberts.
‘All correspondence relating to Mx Sabini-Roberts’s mortgage will use preferred pronouns.’
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