To fight for this?

[AprilAndAndy]

Wondered if anyone could help with this? My dad passed away suddenly in August and I’ve been going through his paper work.

I found a letter from a solicitor referring to his mothers house. She died in 1987, leaving her house to be shared between her new husband and my dad. The husband was allowed to continue living in the house for the rest of his life, but then my dad and his children would inherit an equal share.

We took a drive past the other day to have a look (from the outside, didn’t want to approach anyone as the husband would be very elderly and didn’t want to freak him out!)

There’s a ‘sold’ sign out the front. We went to the estate agents on the sign, the guy told us the husband has dementia and his children are selling the house.

There was a solicitor which dealt with my gran’s will - they were supposed to contact us if something like this happened - but didn’t. We dug around a bit and found that they’ve been taken over by a new solicitor who claims to know nothing at all.

I asked the estate agent to contact the husbands relations - he did and the son who’s selling the house said - yes, we know, we will split the money with you when the sale goes though.

I said - great, but could we have something in writing? His solicitors are now saying they want proof/the will/the paper work etc

We haven’t got the will, any paperwork other than a few letters referring to how the assets should be split and are worried they’re trying to push through the sale.

We’re thinking of engaging the solicitor which took over my gran’s will but not sure if they’ve been negligent in some way. But they may have access to some old paper work which could help. They want to charge us £100 for an initial meeting - even though if they’d informed us like they were supposed to, it wouldn’t be necessary!

Also - are my gran’s husband’s children (phew!) doing anything illegal in selling a house which is not theirs?

Literally never had to deal with anything like this before - any advice gratefully received!!

I think you can apply for a copy of any will from Somerset House for a start

If confirmation or probate has been granted you should be able to find out easily enough.

I think in scotland you would contact court. No idea bout England though.

Put this on the legal board because what they are doing is illegal and you need to inform their Solicitor that the house isn't theirs to sell. The Solicitor is duty bound to put a stop on the sale until this is looked into.

Take the letters to the Solicitor and they will copy them and then take whatever next steps they have to.

You shouldn't have to pay the original Solicitor a fee to sort this out,if they haven't done everything that they were supposed to. Someone will be along to tell you who you complain to, such as an Omnibusman etc.

Who is the house registered to?

As said, you can get a copy of the Will.

Look up placing a charge on a house with land registry so you have to be notified. If son has said they knew why hadn't they contacted you. As this is a verbal admission wrote to the solicitor dealing with the sale tell them about the verbal admission from family selling the house that proceeds are to be split and take it from there.

But if the Man is still alive, the money his still his to pay for care?

It all sounds very complicated at a very difficultvtimr. I hope it doesn't create headaches.

My mum put a life interest on the annexe attached to her house and it caused us no end of difficulties. I hope you can get this sorted out as it was two years of complete stress in order to get the house sold - there's no way they can just sell it out from under you and if they do you can go after them for half the proceeds.

Surely when the land registry was transferred both the h and your dad should have been included. The property sale cannot proceed without permission of both or their heirs.

You can download the title deeds from LR and get a copy of the will.

Thanks for all the replies. I had a look on the Somerset house website, they don’t deal with it any more and I was redirected to the land registry people. I rang them and they said the house isn’t registered to anyone. This is unusual but can happen in properties where people have been there for years.

This does beg the question - how are they managing to sell the house? Surely there has to be some sort of paper trail that the buyer’s solicitors have to check out?

I’d rather not go down a legal dispute route if it’s at all possible - I kind of got the impression that the solicitors might be trying to create a situation?
I’ve only asked for a legal assurance that the money would be split - now I’m being told I have to get a solicitor - but I’m thinking that is just standard practice for this kind of thing?

I was hoping to just directly speak to the husbands children to try to sort this out without paying lots of legal costs.

A friend of my partners is a property solicitor and they’ve said that it’s imperative to put a charge on the house to prevent sale.

Not sure what to do next.

You must get legal advice. These things are so much more complicated than they seem and without proper legal advice you can't trust that anything that's drawn up with stand up in court.

Try www.gov.uk/search-will-probate