Journal: Buying Selling and having a baby.

I'm in the middle of selling my flat, buying a house and at the same time my wife is 4 months pregnant. We need to get the flat sold, buy the house, get it fit for a pregnant mother, and move in all before mid febraury. But as usual where solicitors are involved there is a kybosh. The sale of the flat is in a stalemate - my solictor and the purchasing solicitor are in a headjam over something called a "letter of obligation". Basically, it's a letter provided by a solicitor stating that nothing will happen to the property between the day we sign the deal with the purchasers and the day they get round to actually registering the new title deeds. This can be about 21 days on average. And it's basically a guarantee backed by an insurance company stating that the house won't be re-posessed or have any other order placed on it before the purchasers get to register the deeds. It's a complicated deal because of an orginal shared equity deal with the builders of the flat. The builders want to use their own solictor, and won't let my solicitor represent them on their small share of the deal, but the builders solicitor is being a bit of a pain. The builder's solicitor's insurer won't allow them to issue a "letter of obligation" and the purchasers solicitor is insisting on one. It's becoming quite stressful and getting a bit frightening. If the sale of the flat falls through we won't be able to proceed with the purchase of the house and that will not be fun. (Understatement!!) As it happens, this whole house sale/purchase thing seems to have the providence of God stamped all over it, the ways things worked out and the things which seemed to fall into place, including location, price etc were definately a direct answer to prayer. So that makes me believe this current deadlock is the devil's handywork, and I don't like facing him head on!