Q&A

Mis-spelled name in land registry - does it matter?

Hi, we (or actually my partner) bought our first home in December. My partner's name has the letter "ö" in it, which doesn't exist in English. The correct transcription for it is "oe". In his passport, in the "plain text" it appears as "ö"; in the machine-readable text it appears as "oe". When he opened his current account, the bank insisted on spelling his name with an "o" at first, just dropping the two dots of the ö. When he initially was approved for a mortgage in the same bank, the name was thus also written with an "o". However, the purchase fell through. Later, he managed to convince the bank that the correct spelling is with "oe" and they changed everything in the accounts. For the house we then finally did buy, he was able to keep the original mortgage offer. We repeatedly told our solicitor that the spelling should be "oe", not "o". But when we received a copy of the land registry entry, the name there was spelled with "o", e.g. wrongly. When we asked our solicitor about this, she said that this was the case because the name had to precisely match the name on the mortgage papers. Which still said "o". Now I am a bit worried. All account details are for "oe". All utility bills are "oe". The passport says "oe". But the land registry entry and the mortgage papers say "o". Could this, will this eventually cause a problem? Will somebody suddenly claim that the house is not his? Because the name and the passport don't match...? If this indeed could be a problem, I suppose we should have the land registry entry changed. I am aware that this is costly. Would somebody else (the solicitor, the bank?) be liable for this or would we have to pay it ourselves? Thanks for your help!