Step mother and my inheritance

[fetchmemyparasol]

My father died in 1997 he was reasonably wealthy, my step mother inherited the two houses he had plus any additional assets.
My father did not leave a will, however my siblings and I decided not to enquire what he had left.
Fast forward to two weeks ago my stepmother died, her relative a second cousin had taken her from where she had been living to his home, my brother had previously been looking after her.
As far as we were aware she had not made a will so as we are aware all her assets go to her blood relative.

We have now found out that my father was the sole owner of the house she was living in, my question to any one in the know is .
Can her blood relatives have the house or does it belong to my siblings and I who are my fathers children.
Also this cousin is now claiming that there may be a will leaving it to his family .

If your father was the sole owner, then it would pass to your SM. And her blood relatives wil ltake precedence over yourselves.

Unless, your DF made a will giving your SM life tenure, then passing to his own children after SMs death.

However ! If you can find a reputable witness who could give verbal evidence that it was your fathers intention that it was a life tenure then pass to your selves, you might be able to challenge it.

These cases illustrate the importance of wills.

You need to get legal advice.
I think it depends on the value of the estate (I am assuming they were married?). Google says:
If there are surviving children, grandchildren or great grandchildren of the person who died and the estate is valued at more than £250,000, the partner will inherit:
all the personal property and belongings of the person who has died, and
the first £250,000 of the estate, and
half of the remaining estate.

Were they married?
And what was the value of the estate?

If they were not married. The house goes to your fathers children equally.

If they were married then your stepmother gets the first £250k, the personal possessions and half of what’s left. Your fathers children get the other half of what’s left.

Most law firms will off you a free 1/2 hour appointment. I work for a law firm but not this field. If there is a will you can dispute it as children, you may or may not be successful depending on many factors. If there is no will and no spouse then children should inherit (very broadly speaking). It can be surprisingly complex so definitely get some free advice!

My father died in 1997 he was reasonably wealthy, my step mother inherited the two houses he had plus any additional assets.

We have now found out that my father was the sole owner of the house she was living in

I presume you mean he was the owner in 1997, before your step-mother inherited the house. So for 22 years the house has been your stepmothers?

It looks like you won't get anything, unless she adopted you.

(Or are you saying you should have got something in 1997? How much was his estate worth?)

If your dad died without a will the house goes to his wife, your SM. And if she died without a will the house goes to her next of kin. As pp have said, you may be able to get a little bit if the estate was worth over £250k.

You haven't said whether they were married, which is the key thing. If they were, his estate went to her under intestacy laws, and now passes to her relatives. If they weren't, she would have inherited nothing and what was his should have passed to his relatives.

If they were married then this:

If your father was the sole owner, then it would pass to your SM. And her blood relatives wil ltake precedence over yourselves.

Surely a step mother implies they were married? There's no other way to become a step mother.

Wills should be obligatory. I've just read a story of a couple who died and his daughter and her daughter are asking who died first so they can see who gets the money. All very unsavoury given they clearly didn't give a shit when they couple were alive due to them dying of hypothermia. The grown up thing to do would be to split it in half. In your case op I'd suggest splitting with your family getting the bigger share since it appears your dad actually bought the house.

If under the terms of the will your father made, she inherited the house, it is hers to will to someone else. Exactly as it would be yours if someone willed it to you. It’s rubbish for you.

This is a complicated area and you should seek legal advice, the intestacy rules changed in 2014 so it could be that the estate was dealt with under the old rules (or should have been). So under these circumstances any jointly owned properties would have gone directly to SM along with any personal posessions e.g. jewellery. For the remainder she would have got the first £250k but only a lifetime interest on half the remainder so she wouldnt be able to leave it to her decendants as it shouldn't have been fully hers (i think). Complicated!

i would get legal advice rather than random on the internet.

Your father died in 1997 and you are only asking about this now? Why's that? Were you a child when he died?

Yes you need legal advice and properly look at the estate and what happened when he died its very complicated

Why do so many people not have wills!

God this is awful. This is why I refuse to get married again and why I have a will leaving everything to DS.

this needs really detailed, specialist advice.

fwiw [at a guess nothing], if he was wealthy he imo shoudl have given a lot of thought to provide for both his second wife and kids.

Were they married? That is relevant to the answer here.

If they were married when he died intestate then his wife would be his next of kin. If they weren't then it would usually have been split between his children, and I assume that would be you and any siblings you have.

If your stepmother died without a will then her estate, which likely includes the remainder of his estate too now, will pass to her blood relatives, which will usually be her children. It can be split between other blood relatives if she had no children (her own siblings etc.).

This is why it is so important to make a will and to be clear about your wishes if you do not want this to happen.

It can be difficult sometimes to determine whether or not someone had a will, especially if no documentation can be found. Personally, I think that all wills should be on a central database nationally, so that they will show up easily when a death is registered. But I digress from the point of the post.

I hope you get some answers.

I don't really understand why you're asking this now. You accepted your step-mother's inheritance in 1997. This would have appeared to have followed the normal rules of intestacy. At the time, you might have been able to challenge this if you could prove that he wanted to leave something to you or you could demonstrate financial dependence and a legitimate expectation that you would inherit.

At that point, he has no more assets. He's dead. You have not found out 22 years later that he was the sole owner of your (now deceased) step-mother's house. He's not the owner of anything. She was. Are you saying he was the sole owner before he died? If so, that's irrelevant. She inherited his assets as surviving spouse. It makes no difference if she owned it together or he owned it solely. It's all hers.

So now she's dead, if she's not made a will leaving you anything, it goes to her relatives in accordance with the laws of intestacy.

I think you've got a bit confused/side-tracked by the house ownership issue. I can't see how it's relevant.

NB. I've assumed that they were married when your father died and that the estate was not over the threshold at which the surviving spouse inherits everything (above a certain amount, the spouse gets a certain amount and the rest is split between children). But the time to investigate that would have been on your father's death, not now.

Get legal advice - some of the advice you are getting on here is pretty good - some of it isn’t!

Agreed with Weepingwillow5 - having worked in a law firm - get legal advice from a solicitors not randoms on internet.

And for the future to anyone but especially if they have property, assets or dependants, make and update wills regularly and add codicils (changes) for any change that affects who/what you leave your estate to, or, if you get older, if someone has died whom you were leaving assets to.

I don't understand why people confidently pronounce about the law on threads like this when it's plain they don't know much about it. OP needs to go to a solicitor as soon as possible. Even if she can't get a free half hour given the amount of money involved here paying for an hour of advice could be a very good investment.

Nobody can advise fully with just what we know from OP, in any case.

OP has not told us where her father lived. Law is different in Scotland.

OP has not told us whether her father was married to stepmother. Lots of people use that terminology even if there was no marriage. Legal position would be totally different if there was no marriage.

OP has not told us how much her father's estate was valued at. I am not a lawyer so my opinion should definitely not be taken as infallible but I believe that in intestacy surviving spouse only inherits the lot if the estate is worth under a certain amount. Anything above that is divided between spouse and children.

Happened to a friend, his Father died, now there was a will which disappeared apparently of course father could have been mistaken. The step mother had alzheimers, so the family took her off to a home where she died within months. The family divvied up the assets from their stepfather. The son got nothing. He did not even get anything from the home as a memento. He is a lovely man so has chosen to ignore it.