To not get loan for share of property that I do t want

[emotionalmess2019]

I'll keep it brief but essentially i own a sharedproperty with my siblings. Summer home in the south. We share equally, contribute equally etc . My parents are deceased and left this house and land to us in their will. It is in an expensive and much sought after location so property prices are inflated . One of my siblings wants out so besides the option of selling the whole property which sibling can force if it comes down to it, the other siblings would have to buy her out. This would cost me e40k which I do not have in cash . I would have to get a loan and pay hefty interest as you can imagine. I don't want any of this , neither do my other siblings. Our parents understood that the law is the law but wanted the house and land kept in our names and for their grandchildren in the future. They said this over and over throughout their lives . The land has been in the family for generations . I am
Gutted but trying to keep emotion away from it. Any advice or thoughts welcome .

They made their feelings clear

Yes they did. Absolutely crystal clear. In a legal document.

So OP should respect that.

Have you all really given a lot of thought to the future of this property? At present 5 of you have an equal share. It may not cost much at the moment, but at some point it will need remedial work (new kitchen or bathroom or something), so the longer you keep it, the more it will cost. Whilst it might be manageable for 5 (or 4) siblings to part own it, what happens if one sibling gets divorced? Their ex could demand half of their share as it would be a marital asset. So is the ex made part owner, or are you back to the position of having to sell or buy out the sibling? Then there comes the time to pass it on to the next generation. I would assume that all siblings don't have an equal number of children, so the shares going forward would not be equal. The grandchildren would inherit at different times, depending on when you and your siblings pass. The first GC to inherit could decide they want out, so does everyone have to pitch in again to buy them out? This is messy now, and it will get worse as time goes on. All for an expensive property that is only being used 4 months of the year. Madness!

Threatening legal action is coercion though is it not? The OP is being forced either to take a loan, or sell the property, neither of which she wants to do. How is that not coercion?

If the siblings won't agree to a request that the property be sold or the sister bought out, what else can the sister do? Any refusal by them to honour the terms of the will could equally be seen as coercive.

The 2 siblings who wanted to develop it/invest in it was because it needed modernisation - think 60's timewarp. Anyone who wanted to retain it would have needed to spend money on it anyway - plumbing, new windows, rewiring, etc. 2 of the siblings had other financial commitments so had no desire to pump money into it. Ultimately, everyone saw that it was way too much hassle and sold up to cut their losses. The buyer got a good bargain!

Surely the starting point is that the condition of the will allows any single child to decide the house will be sold? It does not allow the remaining 3 to veto the sale.

Once you start there, then any talk of buying her out & imposing conditions becomes moot. She is not the one in the weaker position if she wants to sell and the will allows her to force a sale even against the other's wishes. She does not need to negotiate to get what she wants.

If the remaining children want to keep the house in the family then they must buy her out. Unless there is some mechanism for forcing the buy out, then they are in a weaker, legal position. As a result, they may want/need to negotiate to convince the sibling to sell to them rather than force the sale of the whole house.

If the OP does not have the money and does not want to borrow the money for a buy out then the house must be sold.

Agree with others that it sounds like a ticking time bomb, anyway. Still, it's a pity that the parents did not put more thought into the problems of a shared house before deciding on this course of action.

So the parents' wishes in the will are that one child can force a sale therefore we cannot assume they wanted the opposite surely! If they wanted it in the family for generation it would have been easy for them to put it in a trust with family members simply having a right to live there. So clearly they want this sibling to be able to sell. So either take the loan or it will have to be sold.

if the Op's sister had been nicer it would be easier

she could just have said

"I know we all have a 20/25% share ( it is not clear whether OP has 4 siblings or whether she is one of 4) but I really don't want my share tied up in a holiday home I hardly ever use, I would like to realise the asset within the next year, we could get it valued so you can buy my share out or we could sell it either way I'll continue to help pay for the maintenance, if you decide to buy me out I'll pay for valuation and we can share solicitors costs or if we sell all costs can come out of the sale price let me know what you think so we can move forward in the next couple of months"

That is not coercion that is being polite but still stating that you want out, asking for your legal share is not blackmail now it maybe that it would not matter how nicely she asked OP would not be happy but there appears to be a back history of this sibling being greedy and domineering she doesn't appear to have said maybe take a couple of months to decide whether you want to sell or buy me out but has jumped straight to threat of legal action

on the other hand if OP's sister has been asking for her share for months and no-one will take action or even discuss selling or buying out then the sister would be right legal action to force sale would be the only option left

It's only a personal view, but quite frankly if the place is empty for 8 out of 12 months I'd sell it anyway, if only to avoid the inevitable deterioration, security issues and so on

I understand what your parents did on an emotional level, but this problem is what can so easily happen if you try to tie future generations into anything ... sooner or later one wants out and the issues start

It makes no difference if your sister's a money-grubbing wretch or the archangel Gabriel; for good or ill she's fully entitled to what she's asking, so to avoid yet more problems when the next owner wants out it may be that your only choices are buying her out or selling up completely

Even if you and your siblings keep the property in the family, then it will pass on to all your children. And that's going to get even messier. There's a reason why land used to be inherited by just the eldest son.

If one of your siblings wants to keep the property, they can buy it. Otherwise, sell it now. It's going to be a nightmare for you, and an even greater nightmare for your children in the future.

There's no suggestion the house is anywhere but in the UK. I'd sell and split the costs and proceeds. Anything else will be complicated and risk a huge family falling out. It's a lot of money tied up in a place you use only occasionally and it's also taking up a house someone could live in full time.

I was going to say the same as Distance - at some point in the future the ownership/usage is going to get ever more complicated when the next generation inherit. It's never going to be easy to unravel, especially with emotional hold your parents put upon the property. Good luck - I don't envy you this situation.

That the sibling doesn't sound like a very nice person is not particularly relevant. Whether she has a very good reason for selling or is just a greedy cow, she does have the right to want out. The parents could perhaps have organised things better, but they do seem to have been realistic enough to allow that one can force the sale; you can't leave a property to 4/5 people and expect it to necessarily suit all of them to keep it up in the long term. It is a great shame that some of the siblings would have loved to keep the property in the family, but you know, sometimes life doesn't allow you to do what you wanted. Or you could, but the cost is just not worth it.

I have to say, though I hope I'd be a lot politer about it, if I were in the OP's sister's position I'd probably want to cash in the asset too, rather than pay maintenance towards a white elephant for ever more. She may not be poor but that's a lot of very useful money to pass up.

We don't know the sister who wants to sell has been unpleasant - she just has a different take on things than the OP and she doesn't have the same emotional/sentimental attachment.

It is always very hard with an inheritance property as I know well myself when not everybody pulls the same amount of weight in terms of upkeep, maintenance and admin - let alone additional financial elements.
In this scenario you really have 3 versus 2 who don't want additional financial input. Your sibling who wants to sell, you don't want the additional loan and your other sibling who could not raise the capital full stop. In time this will stretch the boundaries between you all and just become more and more difficult to manage. Especially since your parents did not set this up within their will as part of a trust.
You mention land. The only other possibility I see is selling a parcel of land that can then be split and equally used to buy out the sibling who wants to sell. Is this possible? However, over time with more and more people involved within this scenario I would imagine the property will end up being sold anyway. Sorry but this is a messy situation that will always raise problems.

you can't leave a property to 4/5 people and expect it to necessarily suit all of them to keep it up in the long term

That's exactly the point, Annie - and it could get even worse if yet another generation have to shoulder the ownership, to say nothing of possible future arguments about inheritances

For me, all of this is why it might be better to sell the place now and focus on happy memories of the parents in other, less burdensome ways

The parents didn’t give a gift, they gave a millstone. I wonder if they discussed this fully with everyone before they died?

I would want out of this deal too. Property is only an investment if return on it is possible and it doesn’t seem the case here. The will says it can be sold. Sister is within her rights. OP doesn’t like her anyway and has decided she’s just a trouble maker, but surely if that’s the case then selling is the best thing.

I agree with others, this situation is only going to get messier with time. I don't think the sibling is being unreasonable in wanting to realise such a valuable asset that is of such little practical use to them, or indeed the rest of the family.

As others have said, it's all very well your parents saying they wanted it to stay in the family, it's quite another being able to do this when there are so many siblings involved. This is why large stately homes are almost always passed down to the eldest child, even if you sort something out between siblings, by the time you get to grandchildren you're looking at 10+ people in all likelihood! I honestly think that the only way to ensure this stays in the family is for 1 sibling to buy the others out and then to leave it to 1 of their children in their will. If this isn't viable then I truly think that it will be a hell of a lot easier in the long run to just sell up.

Why can't three of you remortgage the property. Interest rates are all time low. Take it for 30 years

Sorry, that wasn't me disagreeing with TeacupDrama, it was a cross post.

I can see why it's a wrench... but it was going to happen sooner or later. You can't all live forever.

Maybe use this as a time to evaluate your own finances... is there anything else you could do with the cash (to honour your parents, or not) or to help out your own family, for example?

Definitely get some appropriate financial advice...

OP, it really doesn't matter how many times your parents said, during their lives, that they'd like the property kept in the family for later generations. It matters how it was bequeathed to the family members. It was left jointly between the 5 siblings and not in a trust so, sadly for you, your sibling is perfectly at liberty to request its sale.

You don't have any choice other than to sell or buy that sibling out. If they take you to court they will definitely win and you and your other 3 siblings will probably have to pay that siblings costs. It won't be some prolonged court case, it is very straightforward and the law is on your sibling's side. There is no reason for her to accept less than market value unless she wishes to.

As the house is a 2nd property which you have part-owned for a number of years, you will be liable for Capital Gains Tax when it is sold. As 5 of you own it then you will be pay tax on the difference between 1/5 of (selling price less the value when inerited) less annual exemption of £12,000. So, if the value has increased by over £60k over that time then you will actually pay some CGT. You pay 18% if you are a basic rate tax payer and 28% if a higher rate tax payer.

How long could the property be handed down like this for anyway? Are you expecting 8 grandkids to share it, then 16 great grandkids? Someone will have to buy it out at some point.

This^^

We had this in our family, fortunately fate stepped in and the property had to be sold but even before then it had caused family rifts - it's not worth it.

Thanks everyone

Ignore me if this has already been said, but travelling around France - especially rural areas - you see plenty of large, dilapidated houses due to exactly this sort of situation

Granted their rules around bequeathing property are different, but by the time the places get passed to the next generation ... and the next ... you get endless people involved and it just gets worse

Don't get yourself stuck in that situation , OP