Legal question regarding a will
Discussion
I don't know if this is being posted in the right place, but perhaps there are some solicitors amongst PH which may be able to shed some light on something I am helping my mother with. I'll say at this point that proper legal advice will be sought when possible, but a bit of online research never hurts.
My grandfather passed away a few years back now. My mother was his carer in his last couple of years, and it had quite a bad effect on her future employment prospects and she's going through some financial hardship at the moment. This isn't a horrible case of money grabbing or anything like that, but sadly I supoose something that a family does look in to sometimes after their loved one passes. After several disagreements with my grandads wife (she's always been particularly horrible and unreasonable), some things that she has said to my mum lead us to look in to my grandads will a little more, as its been insinuated the will isn't worth the paper it's written on.
The will states that my grandfathers equity share in his property shall go to my mother and my uncle, but they must allow his wife to live in the property providing she pays the bills and keeps it maintained, until she dies, or wishes to sell the house.
Two questions now - the deeds to the house don't show my grandfathers name at all, even though he more or less bought and renovated the house by himself some years ago. Should his name be on the registry, or does a deceased person get removed? Both his wife and for some strange reason, her sister, are the only two names on the registry website on the deeds. This doesn't sound right at all to me. Does this make the will null and void? Perhaps there is other paperwork to backup the equity share my grandad had in the house... He was a property developer so had plenty of dealings with a solicitor regarding legal paperwork for property, so maybe there is more to it.
Question 2, providing she hasn't been screwed over on this, would my mum be able to release her equity share in the property via a compny who buys equity in a property as an investment? This would allow her to free up some money and cut ties with the wicked stepmother, and she gets to stay in the house, everyone's a winner...
As I say, legal advice will be sought on this at some point but maybe someone who knows about this stuff can help. Thank you in advance!
My grandfather passed away a few years back now. My mother was his carer in his last couple of years, and it had quite a bad effect on her future employment prospects and she's going through some financial hardship at the moment. This isn't a horrible case of money grabbing or anything like that, but sadly I supoose something that a family does look in to sometimes after their loved one passes. After several disagreements with my grandads wife (she's always been particularly horrible and unreasonable), some things that she has said to my mum lead us to look in to my grandads will a little more, as its been insinuated the will isn't worth the paper it's written on.
The will states that my grandfathers equity share in his property shall go to my mother and my uncle, but they must allow his wife to live in the property providing she pays the bills and keeps it maintained, until she dies, or wishes to sell the house.
Two questions now - the deeds to the house don't show my grandfathers name at all, even though he more or less bought and renovated the house by himself some years ago. Should his name be on the registry, or does a deceased person get removed? Both his wife and for some strange reason, her sister, are the only two names on the registry website on the deeds. This doesn't sound right at all to me. Does this make the will null and void? Perhaps there is other paperwork to backup the equity share my grandad had in the house... He was a property developer so had plenty of dealings with a solicitor regarding legal paperwork for property, so maybe there is more to it.
Question 2, providing she hasn't been screwed over on this, would my mum be able to release her equity share in the property via a compny who buys equity in a property as an investment? This would allow her to free up some money and cut ties with the wicked stepmother, and she gets to stay in the house, everyone's a winner...
As I say, legal advice will be sought on this at some point but maybe someone who knows about this stuff can help. Thank you in advance!
Edited by Ghost91 on Friday 2nd October 16:05
PurpleMoonlight said:
Property trust law is complicated to say the least, but I fear that if he is not named on either the Deeds or Land Registry Title you are going to struggle to prove he owned a share of it to leave to his children.
This is my concern. I thought what I had obtained a copy of was the deeds but it's the land registry title, showing no new information since over 15 years ago, before the will was made. For all I knew these documents were the deeds, but i guess not.... I wonder how difficult the deeds would be to access and if the will information would be on them. as you can probably tell I haven't got a clue when it comes to this sort of thing!
There is a lender stated on the land registry, I.e. Mortgage provider. There hasn't been a mortgage on the property for some time now, well before my grandad died. Perhaps it's an out of date register but obviously no changes have been made or updated since /:
Edited by Ghost91 on Friday 2nd October 16:52
HTP99 said:
Now, they were joint owners on the land registry documents, regardless of what a legal will would have said, the property automatically transfers to her due to the house registration documents as she; being his wife, is his next of kin, end of, she can do what she wants with the house and any proceeds generated from it.
Presumably she inherited it under the intestacy rules which is not the same issue as the OP.PurpleMoonlight said:
HTP99 said:
Now, they were joint owners on the land registry documents, regardless of what a legal will would have said, the property automatically transfers to her due to the house registration documents as she; being his wife, is his next of kin, end of, she can do what she wants with the house and any proceeds generated from it.
Presumably she inherited it under the intestacy rules which is not the same issue as the OP.We were told that regardless as to the will contents, even if it was legal, due to the registry details being in joint names, the house would be hers anyway.
HTP99 said:
I hit delete by mistake.
We were told that regardless as to the will contents, even if it was legal, due to the registry details being in joint names, the house would be hers anyway.
If it was registered as a joint tenancy then yes it automatically passes to the surviving owner, but still not relevant to the OP whose grandfather isn't listed on Title at all.We were told that regardless as to the will contents, even if it was legal, due to the registry details being in joint names, the house would be hers anyway.
Ghost91 said:
This is my concern. I thought what I had obtained a copy of was the deeds but it's the land registry title, showing no new information since over 15 years ago, before the will was made. For all I knew these documents were the deeds, but i guess not.... I wonder how difficult the deeds would be to access and if the will information would be on them
If the property is registered with the land registry, then that's the authoritative information. Deeds were the old, pre-registration records, and are basically just historical documents now.If your grandfather was a property developer, then there's a strong chance that it was a deliberate move on his part to not be named, to protect the home in the event of business problems. This is the downside of that decision...
There is no reason why the two registered proprietors might not be holding it on trust.
There is a lot more digging to be done.
You need to take legal advice on this one, if for no reason other than to clarify the situation. No hard timeframes here but if there was a will and the wife and her sister were appointed as the executors of that will then it is quite possible that they are holding his share on trust and it would not take more than a faee months post death to sort the required changes out - a few years is way more than enough time.
There is a lot more digging to be done.
You need to take legal advice on this one, if for no reason other than to clarify the situation. No hard timeframes here but if there was a will and the wife and her sister were appointed as the executors of that will then it is quite possible that they are holding his share on trust and it would not take more than a faee months post death to sort the required changes out - a few years is way more than enough time.
Rude-boy said:
There is no reason why the two registered proprietors might not be holding it on trust.
There is a lot more digging to be done.
You need to take legal advice on this one, if for no reason other than to clarify the situation. No hard timeframes here but if there was a will and the wife and her sister were appointed as the executors of that will then it is quite possible that they are holding his share on trust and it would not take more than a faee months post death to sort the required changes out - a few years is way more than enough time.
Thanks for the reply - legal advice being sought. There is a lot more digging to be done.
You need to take legal advice on this one, if for no reason other than to clarify the situation. No hard timeframes here but if there was a will and the wife and her sister were appointed as the executors of that will then it is quite possible that they are holding his share on trust and it would not take more than a faee months post death to sort the required changes out - a few years is way more than enough time.
Grandads wife is a trustee of my share of the house according to his will but I don't think she's holding my mums share In trust as far as the will goes - but I don't know.
Definitely going to look in to it properly.
Why is that parents always think that step-parents will do the right thing?! Deluded is the word!
I have exactly the same problem. Unlikely that the witch will ever stand by what they told us before Dad died and my sister and I are not named in his will. What an eejit! She is more likely to die intestate and this means that her half-brother in Australia will cop the lot (very north of £1m in the house alone!). It is not her fault, it's the old man's idiocy that has caused the problem but she is going to play it like a fiddler! Just imagine, a distant half-brother rellie of a step-parent walking away with an estate that took a lifetime to build!
I have exactly the same problem. Unlikely that the witch will ever stand by what they told us before Dad died and my sister and I are not named in his will. What an eejit! She is more likely to die intestate and this means that her half-brother in Australia will cop the lot (very north of £1m in the house alone!). It is not her fault, it's the old man's idiocy that has caused the problem but she is going to play it like a fiddler! Just imagine, a distant half-brother rellie of a step-parent walking away with an estate that took a lifetime to build!
Edited by Johnniem on Monday 5th October 17:04
Johnniem said:
Why is that parents always think that step-parents will do the right thing?! Deluded is the word!
I have exactly the same problem. Unlikely that the witch will ever stand by what they told us before Dad died and my sister and I are not named in his will. What an eejit! She is more likely to die intestate and this means that her half-brother in Australia will cop the lot (very north of £1m in the house alone!). It is not her fault, it's the old man's idiocy that has caused the problem but she is going to play it like a fiddler! Just imagine, a distant half-brother rellie of a step-parent walking away with an estate that took a lifetime to build!
It's awful. It makes you feel bad for thinking about the money but it's not really about that, it's the principal of it. I have exactly the same problem. Unlikely that the witch will ever stand by what they told us before Dad died and my sister and I are not named in his will. What an eejit! She is more likely to die intestate and this means that her half-brother in Australia will cop the lot (very north of £1m in the house alone!). It is not her fault, it's the old man's idiocy that has caused the problem but she is going to play it like a fiddler! Just imagine, a distant half-brother rellie of a step-parent walking away with an estate that took a lifetime to build!
Edited by Johnniem on Monday 5th October 17:04
It happened to my mum again when her mum died. Grandmothers husband kept everything and when he dies his godawful kids will get everything. Everything that Incidently was paid for by the grandad I talked about above, in their divorce settlement.
Gassing Station | Speed, Plod & the Law | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff