I would love your views but this is a long one so please bear with me.
The context is that me (41), my brother (39) and my sister (37) grew up in a small holding, a small ex-farm with about 6 acres. My sister and I left home at around 20 but my brother never really did. He runs a landscaping business so storing his vehicles and tools there was always important. He lived in my mums house until he was about 35 (minus about 4-5 years here and there) when he converted one of the barns on her property into a house. Whilst he lived with my mum he never paid for rent, bills or food but he would do general building jobs and landscaping work. My mum would pay for some of these jobs but not all given that he wasn’t paying towards bills. Both parties thought they were getting a bad deal.
When my brother decided to convert the barn, my mum got the property valued and the barn and yard were worth a third of the total so she signed that over to my brother and has left the rest to me and my sister in her will (obviously depending on what happens before then - she is super healthy and will hopefully live for many more years and may decide to sell etc). She told us all about this plan at the time but my brother insists he didn’t hear it.
A huge problem has arisen now because after moving into the barn he is pressuring my mum to put the whole property into trust or let him buy her house now so he owns the whole thing. My mum doesn’t want to do this because she wants to keep control of her own house, especially because my brother can be quite dominating and forceful. My brother feels the current arrangement is very unfair because he has put so much work into the whole property, he couldn’t live with neighbours if my mum or us wanted / needed to sell it, and in however many years time he won’t have the money to buy us out. He also thinks the valuation was unfair. He is desperate to find a way to keep the property whole and ideally under his ownership. We have suggested he buy an investment property instead but he doesn’t want to do this.
My sister and I don’t even want to discuss this given that my mum is alive and well. But my stepdad died without a will and it was awful, which is why my mum wants it all agreed. And its stressing my brother so much that it is now causing a huge family rift. We’ve tried counselling but didn’t get anywhere.
So I’d love your advice.
AINBU by siding with my mum and telling my brother that this arrangement is fair, my mum won’t sign over the whole house and his best bet is long term planning to buy us out eventually (assuming my mum doesn’t want / need to sell in the meantime). Or AIBU and I should think about my brother’s side more and how to talk to my mum about transitioning the house to him? Thank you in advance for your help, any thoughts gratefully received.