My gran died without leaving a will

[Helmlover]

My gran passed away 7 years ago without leaving a will, however she stated clearly while she was in the hospice that my aunt should have my gran’s house (she had already been living with my gran before she died). The problem now is my mum (my gran’s daughter) is experiencing financial difficulties and could really do with her share of the house (as the law still states that it should be split equally amongst the deceased children), however this is causing tension within the family as the other brothers and sisters are saying that she should be respecting her mums wishes and let my aunt have it. To make matters worse, my aunt is neglecting the house and my mum is watching her inheritance go down the drain! What is the right thing for my mum to do in this situation?

Seriously given how little the property is worth and how many siblings involved, the legal costs could take up more than what she would receive. Plus she would have to live with herself knowing she made her sister homeless and went against her mother's wishes.

Surely there's a big difference between saying someone can continue living in your house after you have died and gifting it to them or their inheriting it. The house needs to be registered in aunties name for her to be the owner surely.

Your mother's share will vanish in legal costs. You know what your grandmother' wishes were, do the right thing.

Get a solicitor, your mum is entitled to her share.

Wow. How grabby is your mum...

People are very quick to jump to the assertion that the OP’s mum is being grabby here.

While I agree that seven years is far too long to have waited to settle this, and that given the amount of money talked about here even if it had been sorted earlier it’s likely any inheritance would have been spent by the OP’s mum anyway, all we know is that the gran apparently said that the aunt could stay in the house after her death. None of that was in writing, in fact were there even any witnesses to this verbal declaration other than the auntie whose interests it was in to say that her sister had given the house to her verbally.

For all we know the auntie may have declared that her sister had told her she could stay in the house and the gran’s children had simply accepted that as fact.

I do think that seven years on it’s far to long to consider now evicting this auntie in order to sell the house, however I do think that in legal terms the ownership of the house needs to be resolved, not least because if the aunt is the gran’s sister, chances are she too is of an age where she may pass on sooner rather than later, and legally she is not the owner of the house and the children are, and as such there is going to come a point where they need to sort out the legal ownership of it etc.

Ok is the aunt your aunt or great aunt and was part of the house hers. Also have you been through probate.

Fighting it though could take up allthe money and more. At most it’s 75k split what 5 ways so 14k most of that can go