Separation - Taking over a mortgage

[Dofe]

Hi,

I'm looking for some advice on an unfortunate situation I'm currently in.

I bought a house over 2 years ago with my then partner. A few months later unfortunately we split up. Myself and my new partner now live in the house with my new partner effectively paying rent to my old partner (for the past year). My old partner however has had to make up the different in rent and her half of the mortgage repayment.

My old partner now appears not to be working and is in receipt of incapacity benefit (just found this out today!), I assume she now wont be making up that shortfall. Myself and my new partner would love, love, love to take over the mortgage however there are a couple of issues 1 - the house is now in negative equity, by a fair amount. It would take years probably for the value to be on par with what we owe. 2 - my new partner wouldn't be earning the same salary as my ex partner was when we bought the house, or indeed before she was in receipt of benefits.

I did enquire very briefly with my lender about a year ago to see if there was anything that they could do (this was when my ex partner was working) but they basically said an application would be better if there was no negative equity. Now with my ex out of work (and I am aware she has a considerable amount of debt she hasn't paid back) do you think we would be in a better position to apply? My lender is also my employer so I hope they would take pity on me!