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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

To be fed up with living near OH’s ‘D’B and his awful GF.

45 replies

Imnotposhjustquaint · 24/01/2018 12:43

We live on a farm, OH is the farmer.

OH’s brother (who has his own business completely unrelated to the farm) is an absolute Pratt.

Himself and his partner have made our lives very, very difficult. In a nutshell BIL was left a lot of land very young by her father who died when he was 12 (before DP was even born) MIL had 3 DC’s to raise as well as a farm to run (DP’s father had left her some land and all of the buildings on the estate). BIL had allowed MIL to rent the land he was left however, over the years has used it as a stick to beat her with. DP says that BIL, in the past, has had MIL held by her throat, thrown spanner’s at her head as broken her glasses as well as punching holes through walls and doors. As a result she always gave him his own way and he was completely spoilt as a child.

Now this has meant various things for us over the years, having to calve cows by torch light because apparently, having lights on in the shed intereferred with BIL’s GF’s shower. We tried to be reasonable and rang her before we put the lights on but even that wasn’t good enough and in the end BIL disconnected the lights altogether.

When DD was first born we were living with MIL. BIL had moved out of the cottage that we were going to move into with DD into the biggest house on the estate (which he’d also bullied his way into, using his land as a bargaining tool). It was 9 months before he would hand the keys over so we could start moving things in by which time the pipes had frozen and burst and left in inhabitable. As well as this his GF (who is a nurse) had left a bag of used sharps in the cupboard under the stairs. We’ve been moved in for 6 years now after a lot of uneccesary expense.
They had to walk past the front of our house to get to theirs and every week they have a dog and complain that the DC’s garden toys are out and that his GF is worried that she will trip over them (the toys are on the grass and there is a path to her house - I never leave the toys on the path). She complains that they make too much noise when they’re out in the garden in summer, openly admits that she ‘hates, loathes and detests’ children. She has screamed at me for parking my car in the wrong place, she has set her dog on our sheep and he has set his dog on our calves before now. He also has a criminal record for beating DP up.

MIL died last year and has left her land in thirds, a third to each child. BIL is refusing to give DP a tenancy on his third (even though he has no use for it as well as that he already owns) which, when everything is properly sorted out, is going to leave us struggling.

DP is upset because he has done most of the work on the farm for the past 22 years and MIL bought land (which DP contributed to) and promised that it would be left to him to continue on the business when she was gone. There’s also more evidence that BIL has bullied out of MIL what he wanted before she died, she has signed over entitlements and 2/3 of moor rights to him and 1/3 to DP. I’m so upset for him, he said that he feels as though he’s still being punished for going to the police when BIL beat him up.

They’re horrible to the kids, the have a complete and utter disregard for DP’s livelihood and it feels as though they’re going to screw him over as much as they can because they enjoy seeing him struggle.

I just want to move, I’ve had enough.

OP posts:
WinnieFosterTether · 24/01/2018 14:01

You need good legal advice. Check very carefully the clause that seems to limit sale of shares only to each other. It will probably be the others are given first option rather than a blanket ban on sale.
I think you also need to try to adjust your attitude to DBIL. You're acting as though he has all the power and if I've read it correctly, although he owns the land he inherited from his father, he only owns a third of MIL's land, estate and buildings. Your DP and his DSIS own the remaining two-thirds.
If your DP and his DSIS agree to work together then they have the majority share. Arguably they could 'threaten' to sell their two-thirds, forcing a valuation of all the assets because even if DBIL decides he wants to buy, you'd want an independent valuation first.
Depending on that valuation, you could pursue an actual sale that enabled you to move away or if DBIL refuses to buy the others' shares then perhaps the threat of a sale to a third party would be enough to make DBIL more amenable to working with your DP.

Scrowy · 24/01/2018 14:02

They stay because it is all the OPs DP knows. It's his home and his business and his family history all rolled into one.

Farming isn't like other jobs.

Imnotposhjustquaint · 24/01/2018 14:05

DP had never had any access to the financial side of the business until just after MIL.

The farm is doing well is all I want to say. We are still being frugal due to the circumstances and the unknown in the future.

We can’t just leave, we will literally have nothing! I work PT and have a good job so that’s how we managed.

The £800 is all that MIL would agree to pay DP.

OP posts:
Imnotposhjustquaint · 24/01/2018 14:09

Thank you winnie I too have had this train of thought as has DP. I think that although the will is a fuck up, MIL has left room for negotiation.

scrowy that’s exactly it, thank you.

OP posts:
whifflesqueak · 24/01/2018 14:13

It’s sounds like he’d be far better off cutting his losses and taking an agricultural labourer job with a tied house.

That’s why my dh did when his family’s business was starting to fracture up. We’ve never been happier or better off.

theymademejoin · 24/01/2018 14:14

Sounds like your mil screwed your dh over. In my experience, the farm is usually left to the one farming it, with maybe a token to the other children. I don't know the legal situation, but you should definitely look into contesting the will. Talk to someone legal with knowledge of farms.

Also, as a pp said, the fact your sil and dp own 2 thirds of the shares means then have the majority and can presumably vote your bil down on decisions on the farm.

Butterandsugar · 24/01/2018 14:15

Is it worth posing this in the legal area to see what you're rights might be?

Imnotposhjustquaint · 24/01/2018 14:22

Oh yes she well and truly screwed him over! She’s treated him like shit over the years and then thrown him to the lions! He still thinks that the sun shone out of her arse though!

The thing is she promised the land to DP and that’s why he stayed, he thought all of his hard work would be rewarded in the end but now we’re at this point and may have to throw it all away.

If he’d known what she was going to do years ago he’d have quite happily left and either gone self employed or worked for someone.

OP posts:
Imnotposhjustquaint · 24/01/2018 14:23

butterandsugar thank you, i think I’ll do that

OP posts:
Pinkponiesrock · 24/01/2018 14:26

There is nothing as complicated as farming families!

Get hold of an agriculturally specialist solicitors and bring your accountant in on it too. The tax law around farming are vastly different to any other area of life.
I’m in Scotland so I don’t know the English system but in Scotland if your BIL is not actively farming his land that he has inherited his tax position will be different to benefactors of the will who have continued to farm.
You’ll need advice on your BPS and all other entitlements too.

Was your BIL part of the business? As far as I know the BPS (single farm payment) belong to the the business not the land, they have to be assigned to some land but it’s not a set area, you just have to have X amount of acres to claim on in a year.

Pinkponiesrock · 24/01/2018 14:27

We are going through this at the moment but before anyone has died as basically there is no trusts and very little security and we could end up in the same position!
Thankfully no crazy in laws living next door though!

mummmy2017 · 24/01/2018 14:34

What a good point about your BIL not farming the Land, he may find he has rather a large inheritance bill, make sure you bring this point up... as he was renting the land to the farm, not part of a working farm.

Sprinklestar · 24/01/2018 14:41

Have you posted before? This sounds familiar. I don’t know what to advise really. You’ve put up with being treated badly for so long!

Scrowy · 24/01/2018 15:00

It probably sounds familiar because farming families pull this kind of shit all the time.

There's regular articles (pretty much weekly) in the farming press about avoiding these kind of situations, but I don't know of many farming families where there isn't tension over succession and managing the family-working relationship.

changemyname1 · 24/01/2018 15:06

Any one not from a farming family will never truly understand why farmers put up with things like this, sadly it happens far too often.
Have you spoken to the NFU they have legal people that specialise in this type of problem.
One farmer I know ended up selling the farm to pay their DB's third who had never done any work on the farm.
Good luck I hope you can work something out as it wont get any easier if it get to the next generation, at the moment it's between 3 people but how many children are there?.

Pinkponiesrock · 24/01/2018 16:41

This is incredibly common in farming families.

I’ve heard of farmers sons only getting to use the business cheque book when the parents have passed away and the son is in his 60s!

Imnotposhjustquaint · 24/01/2018 19:56

We are NFU members and have spoken to them and are going to ask them to write letters to the executors asking for a thirty year tenancy of the othe third of the land (BIL is an executor) before he can try and screw DP anymore than he already has.

We’re looking into renting land to makeup the difference. However a lot of estates claim the SFP and then charge £60/70 per acre per year for okayish pasture. I’d rather borrow the money and buy some land somewhere.

OP posts:
whifflesqueak · 24/01/2018 23:16

Well that’s something, op. But what about your cunt-in-law of a neighbour?

Dh is a farmer but I don’t understand the intricacies of buying/selling/inheriting farmland. Maybe the farming forum would be a wider canvas for information on that.

But in a day to day way, can you keep living next door to your bil? He sounds like an utter twat.

tomatosalt · 25/01/2018 01:57

When you say that DP and BIL own everything together so you mean that they are joint tenants, as opposed to tenants in common? From my hazy memories of property law lectures I’m sure he can petition the court to get an order to sell the whole property if BIL is unable to pay him out.
I understand this may not be your ideal but it might be a better alternative and it may give you a major bargaining chip.

Loyaultemelie · 25/01/2018 10:15

Oh what a nightmare. We are NI so probably slightly different but here you have to be the active farmer to claim the Single Farm Payment on the land and having spoken to a friend who has ground i here and in Lincs he seems to think it's similar there, would that give you any leverage with BIL? As pps have said an agricultural legal specialist will be more helpful but I didn't want to read and run. I completely get why you can't just walk away we farming lots are an odd bunch we stay on when nobody else would through things that would probably be better off left and now when things should be looking better for you this happens Thanks

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