Land in Trust and Land Registry

[opieoilman]

Hope someone can help to clear this up and sorry if it's not in the correct place. My gran left her house and 3 small fields in trust, with myself and my brother as beneficiaries. My mum and uncle are the trustees and my parents live in the house. The intention was always for my brother and I to build a house each in the fields, but now we're trying to sort out planning, we're finding that what seemed quite simple is taking a lot longer and far more money than expected.

The house and fields have been in the family for about 300 years and here is a history of wills passing the property through generations (I think the earliest will is from 1832). The deeds of the house were lost in the 1950s by the bank, we have a letter from the bank confirming this. As the house has always remained in the family, it has never been on the land registry and that appears to be something that will delay it further. My mum and brother visited the solicitors last week and they were told that first off the house and land have to be registered to my parents as they are the ones that are living there, then after that, we go through the process again, dividing the land up to a field each for myself and my brother, then the remaining field and the house to my parents. As the property belongs to the trust at the moment and we are transferring the two fields out of the trust to my brother and I, can't the land now be divided up and registered directly to us rather than being registered to mum and dad first? That is what the will shows will be the final outcome.

Basically, we are trying to build there asap and as the solicitor says each time of registering the land will take about 6 months and cost £1000ish, we'd like to avoid that if possible. Also, to avoid any tax implications, we've put the planning on hold as we don't want to increase the value of the land before it's transferred to us.

[TooMany2cvs]

opieoilman said:

My gran left her house and 3 small fields in trust, with myself and my brother as beneficiaries. My mum and uncle are the trustees

When did she die?

opieoilman said:

The deeds of the house were lost in the 1950s by the bank...
the house ... has never been on the land registry and that appears to be something that will delay it further.

It's time to get started, then... The sooner you get the ball rolling, the sooner it's sorted. You might find that there are restrictions on how the title is registered, because the deeds can't be produced, but any half-way decent conveyancing solicitor should cope with it in their stride.

opieoilman said:

My mum and brother visited the solicitors last week and they were told that first off the house and land have to be registered to my parents as they are the ones that are living there

There's some chinese whispers going on, or the solicitor's an idiot. Who lives in a property's not really a great test of who owns it, which is what's registered at LR, as anybody who rents a house (from either side) can attest.

opieoilman said:

As the property belongs to the trust at the moment and we are transferring the two fields out of the trust to my brother and I, can't the land now be divided up and registered directly to us

But you and your brother don't own it, either. The trust owns it. The trust is a legal entity. Your parents are in charge of managing the trust, and the trust benefits you and your brother - but the trust owns the property... When it's been registered in the trust's name, THEN it can be split up into parcels to be owned by you, your brother and - presumably - still the trust, with your parents as the trust's tenants.

I suspect the whole reason for the trust existing in the first place is so that your parents can never be viewed as owners of it, probably for IHT reasons.

[opieoilman]

Hi

Thanks for that, I think the last 2 bits solve the issue as it needs to go into the trust and then to my brother and I. As for the solicitor being an idiot, mum wasn't impressed with her and we may well look elsewhere. Yes, the trust was set up to avoid inheritance tax and gran died 5 years ago.

Cheers

[TooMany2cvs]

opieoilman said:

Yes, the trust was set up to avoid inheritance tax and gran died 5 years ago.

So it should have been registered at that point.

[Rude-boy]

TooMany2cvs said:

opieoilman said:

Yes, the trust was set up to avoid inheritance tax and gran died 5 years ago.

So it should have been registered at that point.

Yep, although if a fresh will trust would not always induce, especially if there is an intention to sell the trust's land asset in which case it might as well be done as excecs.

Title will need to be registered in the names of the trustees, then you deal with the transfers out to you and bro.

BUT

With the deeds lost you are looking at a more complex application for registration that will involve a lot of people and drafting. The LR are also taking up to 6 months to deal with first registrations.

Now to cut down on the timeline for the transfers to you and bro these should be being prepared in tandem with the registration application. Once the registration application has been sent to the LR they will allocate it a Title Number which the solicitor then just adds to the draft transfers to you and your bro, circulates for execution and then submits to the LR a week or so after the registration application with a covering letter.

Simples, a bit like your solicitor sounds if they weren't able to sugar coat the pill they knew they had to make to swallow.

It's not always what I say that matters, but how I say it. How much more likely would you have been to go back if they had said "Awe, could take up to 12 months to do this but I reckon I can almost cut that in half, if not better, if I do this, this and then this."?


As an aside, i can't fully remember the detail in the OP but if the bank lost the deeds then they should be the ones paying to reconstitute them...

Edited by Rude-boy on Monday 6th June 18:10

[TooMany2cvs]

Rude-boy said:

As an aside, i can't fully remember the detail in the OP but if the bank lost the deeds then they should be the ones paying to reconstitute them...

They lost them in the 1950s.

[Rude-boy]

TooMany2cvs said:

Rude-boy said:

As an aside, i can't fully remember the detail in the OP but if the bank lost the deeds then they should be the ones paying to reconstitute them...

They lost them in the 1950s.

Then to be honest they should have reconstructed them then when there would have been more chance of supporting documents and so on. Bottom line though is that if there is a letter from them admitting to the loss they should still be contacted. Depending on complexity that's about £1k's worth of legal work, reg fees and also quite likely an Indemnity Policy if the LR will not give Title Absolute.