Land ownership advice

[Robatr0n]

Hi all,

I hope this is posted in the correct section.

A friend of the family has asked me for some advice with regards to land ownership. I don't know where to even begin so I thought I would put it to PH as I'm sure there are members here that would be able to take this up for him.

Basically there was some land that said friend feels belongs to him. It was passed down to him from his father, and his father's father passed it to him, etc.. This would probably go back as far as the mid 1800s. I imagine that if the land did infact belong to him that it can be traced through copies of wills and/or the land registry.

Recently the plot of land in question has been sold to a property developer which either means someone has sold land that didn't belong to them or that a family member had sold the land some years back without consulting the family.

If anyway deals with this kind of stuff then please do drop me a PM and I'll furnish you with all the details.

Thanks!

[rsox87]

Use the "find a property" link at the top of this page, find the area in question, pay the Land Registry a few quid, and you'll get the answer.

[Robatr0n]

rsox87 said:

Use the "find a property" link at the top of this page, find the area in question, pay the Land Registry a few quid, and you'll get the answer.

Thanks. I'll have a look in to it.

Only issues I can see are that it's not a house but instead was a plot of land. There have been a series of supermarkets occupying the area since the 70s so this will need tracing back a long way and may require finding wills etc.. to substantiate who owned the land.

He himself has made it clear that he has never seen a deed but was only promised through word of mouth the land and that it would be left to him and his sister in a will.

[The Surveyor]

If you're saying this plot of land has recently been sold to a property developer, there will be an entry in the land registry for that transaction.

Given what you're saying, your friend wasn't listed on the deeds as being the owner of the plot, so the first question would be to find out who sold the land.

Best advice you can give your friend in this situation is to speak to the solicitor who dealt with his fathers estate and confirm if there was anything which identified ownership of the land. It may be there is a genuine claim, or that it's one of the 'one day son, all this will be yours' stories, but either way you need proper legal guidance with land transactions.

[TooMany2cvs]

Robatr0n said:

Basically there was some land that said friend feels belongs to him. It was passed down to him from his father, and his father's father passed it to him, etc.. This would probably go back as far as the mid 1800s. I imagine that if the land did infact belong to him that it can be traced through copies of wills and/or the land registry.

When did he inherit it? If in the last 30 or so years, it should have been registered with the Land Registry as part of the execution of the estate.
If it was longer ago, does he have any documentation at all to show his ownership? If so, how compelling is it? If he's not got anything but a "Well, I was told..." then he's frankly out of luck.

Robatr0n said:

Recently the plot of land in question has been sold to a property developer which either means someone has sold land that didn't belong to them or that a family member had sold the land some years back without consulting the family.

He really needs to check whether it's now registered by that developer with the Land Registry. If it is, then again he's pretty much out of luck, since whoever registered it will have had to prove ownership. Usually, that'd be through the deeds. There are procedures if the deeds aren't available.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/first-r...

There's also procedures to object...
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/objecti...

He might like to remember that, if he's not been exactly hands-on with this land, it could well have been claimed perfectly legally through adverse possession.

Robatr0n said:

Only issues I can see are that it's not a house but instead was a plot of land. There have been a series of supermarkets occupying the area since the 70s so this will need tracing back a long way and may require finding wills etc.. to substantiate who owned the land.

That's definitely going to be registered, then - and there's going to be some fairly solid documentation to show who the freeholder of the land is. I think he's fallen victim to a family legend that's got bugger all basis in reality.

[Rude-boy]

The Surveyor said:

'one day son, all this will be yours' stories,

Got one of those on at the minute. Small 6 bed-roomed place in Chelsea that a relative in Aus is insistent must have been left to them in the Will of a relative that they had not spoken to for 20+ years.

The Will the deceased made a few years ago, with no mention of them anywhere, is apparently a fake constructed to ensure that they do not get their hands on their birthright...

[TooMany2cvs]

Rude-boy said:

Got one of those on at the minute. Small 6 bed-roomed place in Chelsea that a relative in Aus is insistent must have been left to them in the Will of a relative that they had not spoken to for 20+ years.

The Will the deceased made a few years ago, with no mention of them anywhere, is apparently a fake constructed to ensure that they do not get their hands on their birthright...

On the scale of risk-versus-reward, that one's gotta be worth a try...