land investigation

[professornangnang]

I've shortened this story to make it easier to get through but I'm interested to see if anyone has any thoughts.
My great-aunt owned quite a large farm and my mum was her closest living relative. The Great Aunt decided to leave the farm in her will to other more distant relatives as they were male and she did not want a woman to inherit. All well and good, after all it was hers to do what she wished with it. She told mum about this in the 80s, so mum knew anyway.
Since then, my mum died 6 years ago and GA died 2 years ago. My family and I were surprised to discover that my grandfather had owned 50 acres of that farm since the 50s. He died in the early 80s and this is where everything gets hazy. He left a wife behind who we think died mid-eighties. What we know for sure is that after his death, the land was put back in my great- aunt's name. It all seems quite dodgy. Either, his wife gave/sold it to them or she didn't even know that he owned it and the Great aunt and uncle sneakily changed it anyway. I know that if that was the case, we would have no case, as it's impossible to prove what happened. However, there is a possibility that the land was 'signed over' after his wife died, in which case it's a clear case of fraud. The thing is, I'm not sure when exactly she died. I want to find this out and get some justice for granddad and our family. Does anyone know how we could proceed? His wife died in Northern Ireland.

[knewnana]

If the property is registered, and in England or Wales, then then start by downloading a copy of the registered title which should give quite a bit of information with dates.

www.gov.uk/search-property-information-land-registry

Once you know the last date the property changed hands, you can apply for copies of historic registers (Form HC1) - for example, if the register shows latest transfer of the property as being 1 January 2012, then you can apply for a copy of the register dated 31 December 2011. Note, the date by the side of entries in the register in brackets is the dates the Land Registry changed the record. So you need to go by the transfer document date - entry may look like this: "(09 January 2012) By a transfer dated 1 January 2012 ......"

If the property is in Northern Ireland, or unregistered, then sorry, above is irrelevant and I can't help.

Good luck.

[professornangnang]

It is unfortunately. Thank you for your advice though. Much appreciated! :)

[professornangnang]

Thank you Charley