In certain circumstances, keeping your home may not be the best option for you. You may need to consider giving up your home if,  your arrears are mounting up, you expect to stay in prison for a long period of time, or you cannot return to your home due to a conflict.

In such instances, it may be best to go for “appropriate termination”, i.e. ending your tenancy or selling your home.

There are three main things to consider when determining whether “appropriate termination” is the best course of action:

• Length of imprisonment (and ability to pay for housing costs);
• Debt amount (and the risk of your landlord or lender taking possession of your home);
• Is it reasonable for you to return to your home (if community conflict, relationship breakdown or any sort of dispute exists).

If you choose to keep a tenancy without any means of paying the rent or mortgage, and there is still time to serve on your sentence, you could put yourself at risk of being evicted due to rent or mortgage arrears.

If the arrears accumulate to such an amount that it is unreasonable for you to be able to pay them off, continuing the tenancy may be unwise. This could, in turn, create further problems in the future.

For instance, you may experience problems getting loans from banks or building societies. You may also find yourself excluded from the social housing waiting list or the Housing Executive may refuse to re-house you, due to your history of debt problems.

On the other hand, if you end your tenancy or sell your home voluntarily, without just cause for it, the Housing Executive may interpret this as making yourself intentionally homeless and can fail your homeless application on this ground. 

This is a very complicated area of advice. To be sure you’re making the right decision, seek guidance from a specialised adviser in prisons.

Make sure that you consider all the other options before you take the final and difficult step of surrendering your home.