So this is a long story, but the skinny version is this:
My mum has lifelong physical and mental health problems and has a difficult marriage with my stepfather.
My stepfather jointly owns a house with his first wife with whom he has 4 now adult children. He continued to pay off the mortgage for her after they divorced, and lived with my mum in the house she owned. They ran into serious financial difficulties after both of them were unable to find work. It nearly ended the marriage. My mum eventually sold the house, paid off their debts and bought another house outright in a cheaper part of the country.y stepdad came with her after much debate,but this was on the condition he make some attempt to leverage the asset he owned within the ex wife's house, via sale or equity release (he was very reluctant to do this, he has always been very deferential to ex wife which has caused a lot of the problems in his and DM's marriage).
When stepfather made approaches to his ex, two of his DC told him they would never speak to him again if he 'forced' their mum to sell or release equity. She refused to consider it, so to preserve his relationship with DCs DSF dropped it. His and my mother's marriage never really recovered from this.
Fast forward to now - DSF has had a stroke and is substantially impaired. My mother is now his full time carer. Neither of them work so there only income is from early released pensions (small). They are not entitled to claim any benefits due to my dad's supposed 'asset' (half his ex wife's house) which he can neither access nor relieve himself of in order to claim benefits as this would constitute voluntary deprivation of capital. They have sought legal advice and apparently there is no way the ex can be forced to sell, share the property with DSF, or release equity to him.
My mother is going under with the stress of providing him with 24 hour intimate care, has no money to pay for respite care, and is talking about suicide. Her only leveragable asset is the home they live in, which she does not want to touch as she worries she will need it to pay for her own elderly care in due course. My sister and I are giving her what support we can, but we both have little money, young families and live at the other end of the country.
WIBU to write to my DSF's children and ask them to reconsider their stance on their mother's house and ask her to reconsider equity release given these changed circumstances? At the moment it seems like my sister and I are being expected to pay for their father's care in order to protect their inheritance, and it galls me enormously.
If the ex won't budge, would I be unreasonable to encourage her to divorce my DSF? I know this may seem incredibly harsh given how ill he is, but she simply can't afford to be married to him any more, she will either kill herself or lose everything she has trying to get him adequate respite care.
If she divorced him, his children would have to accept responsibility for caring for him, and hopefully their mum would then relent and release his money from their house so he can get the care he needs. This will never happen as long as the only people making sacrifices are my mum, my sister and me.
So AIBU to expect his kids to step up?
AIBU?
To write a strongly worded letter to my stepdad's kids?
lelapaletute · 20/07/2017 23:13
I am very surprised that there is no way the XW can be forced to sell - unless that was sewn up in their divorce which seems unlikely. Have they definitely taken proper legal advice? Not saying they have when what they mean is a quick chat with a friend who works in another legal field? I'm just imagining that your SF might have said the advice was he can't force a sale, because he doesn't want to.
I would certainly write to his children, but it seems very likely you won't get anywhere, so be prepared for that 
I must stress again that I'm an internet random here, not a lawyer 
But I did do a Graduate Diploma in Law 10 years ago, and have ideas buzzing round my head from that
Firstly - make sure they didn't agree something about not selling in the divorce (though I think he could anyway apply to vary it - no idea if that's likely to be successful though, I think not so likely)
If not - they may simply be co-owners.
In which case I think what he needs is an application under Section 14 of TOLATA (you can google with that acronym) to ask the court to give an order for sale. I've no idea if they can order agreement for equity release. I think he'd be expected to go to mediation first, too. Court would look at all circumstances - a big one is dependent children which doesn't apply.
Honestly though - even if Section 14 TOLATA application can be made, doesn't sound like he will. He doesn't need to, whilst your mum is looking after him.
I'm all for "in sickness and I'm hearth" - but not if a divorce is merited regardless of health.
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