Friend evicting elderly tenant

[AppalachianWoman]

Would it change the way you felt about your friend if he evicted an elderly (70+) tenant so he could move into the house instead? The rent was paid upfront through a lifetime of agricultural labor from late childhood but the friend who recently inherited the estate feels they are owed cash payments and the property. The tenant cannot read or write and was widowed a year or two ago, has no children of his own but some step children from his marriage. The friend currently occupies another, smaller, property on the estate and was expected to move into the largest house which is very grand indeed but requires extensive renovation. He is daunted by the work and expense and has instead become fixated on the property the elderly farmhand lives in.

It feels emotionally immature of me to drop a friend over a difference in values but I am shocked that he would even consider this course of action. I don’t want to be friends with someone who acts this way, how can I exit gracefully or should I try to support him as he has supported me emotionally through decades of friendship?

Sorry I don’t get how your response is immature or what would be wrong with feeling envious. You do sound a bit naive though. As you can see by vote here this “friend” is not generally supported in his actions. I’m hoping that it’s discovered that the original owner has legally protected his employee and friend. If he hasn’t I would imagine it wouldn’t occur to him that they were at risk of being evicted by the benefactors. The worst part of it all is this man not considering one obvious option because he’s just “done the kitchen” unbelievable. I really hope the tenant has rights of tenure. Well he may have been supportive to you in the past everyone is a mixture. But this is showing true colours. Ditch him

But the wages he was on would have meant he had a life time tenancy.

If you cleaned the house down the road and worked for the family full time from being a child and were given a house to live for the east of your life and a minuscule wage then yes you get to keep the house.

Also if he has been living in the house since before 1989 on even a peppercorn rent then he can stay. It is illegal to evict him.

This has nothing to do with providing for his future. How could he do that on the wage he was paid. If this person now want him out and won’t offer him any other accommodation then buying him out is the only other option. Compensating him for the lost wages he should have earned if he didn’t have a lifetime tenancy.

What you think is fair or not fair isn’t what the law says.
Otherwise what is to stop anyone snapping up a property at auction on the cheap because it has life time tenants in and then evicting them and selling the property on

I'd help the elderly man get legal advice. Squatters rights perhaps.

There is no such thing as squatters rights . Squatting is illegal in residential homes in the U.K.

This man though is not a squatter and he has a legal right to remain in the property till he dies.
You can’t have it both ways. You can’t pay someone a tiny wage, have them work for you for the whole of their working life and then say you want the house you gave them a life time tenancy to instead of a proper wage back when it suits you.
The farm is a business. As a business it owns a property with a sitting tenant in there. Even if the person inheriting the estate was homeless that house is not a place he can live in as it is already occupied.
I could buy many properties that come up at auction with sitting tenants in. They go for very little money because you are buying in effect a buy to let property with a top rental income of £50 or £100 per month and until that person leaves on their own accord or you offer them enough to go elsewhere or they die or just refuse everything on offer you are responsible for the maintenance on that property for the next 20/30 or 40 years or for however long they live.
In that time you could end up homeless. You still can’t evict who ever is living in the property you own.

If my dc inherited my property and someone found it appropriate to plonk their entitled behinds in my dc's property, I'd come back and haunt them

But this guy didn’t plonk his behind in the property. He was given the tenancy in lieu of the piss poor wages he survived on for the whole of his life.

The only entitled person is the person who has inherited this estate and hasn’t a clue and isn’t willing to find out how the farm works and how the business runs and wants to play at landed gentry to a failing business.

The fact that he is even thinking of evicting an old man who has given his life to the business and has every right to remain in the property and more than likely piss off the local community and those who would help him learn how to run the farm and maybe turn it around just makes him look like a brainless tw*t who will end up bankrupt before long.

I said this earlier in the thread that this inheritance for the parties involved who sound like they don’t know or understand the first thing about about farming and farming communities and are not willing to learn, it is a poisoned chalice.
It might probably be able to be turned around into a profitable business but they need every help they can get and not alienating the very people who could help them turn it around.
It sounds like they all want to look like they are the gentlemen farmers and want their friends to be impressed by their good fortune and new lifestyle and throwing their weight around whilst ignoring the reality of the farm accounts.

If any of these people who have inherited this estate had any intelligence they would have handed the keys over to an agent and had put it up for sale earlier in the year when house prices were rocketing.
Now I would say they face bankruptcy and the estate will go to auction but they wont get the kind of price they would have got months ago.
Concentrating on trying to get a sitting tenant out of a house and doing up another house is just fiddling around the edges whilst the business goes further and further into debt.
This person is an arrogant fool and arrogant fools tend to fall on their backside very quickly

I don't think I'd want to be friendly with such an unfeeling person, unless proper help has been given to the tenant re re-homing, etc.

It is difficult if it is a friend who has been a support to you but nevertheless it would alter my feelings about him I think I would say something, not too confrontational, but express concern for the elderly tenant and ask what arrangements are being made.

I realise I’ve posted on this thread before but I really hope OP has managed to either ring or get in touch with the tenant. Sending messages or emails won’t work as he’s illiterate. Hopefully there’s a go between (farming charity, local vicar etc) who can act as a go between.

From what PPs have said sadly if people inherit money, get older they can get really fixated on being tight with money or doing people out of money, an uncle (by marriage) was a master at doing this) and so was DM’s oldest platonic male friend after his DM died, egged on by his evil second wife.

I'd be very surprised if the tenant wasn't given the cottage for life as part of the will unless he chooses to move. Otherwise someone really screwed up writing the will.

He has already been given the house for life.
It might not be in the will because it is part of the business. So this friend and others have been bequeathed the business, the business owns the houses and one of which is occupied by the farm worker who was given the house to live in for the rest of his life instead of being paid a proper wage.

And if the business owns the houses then this friend and whoever the other heirs to this estate are fighting over a house they will in all likelihood loose. The farm is running at a loss. Nothing I’d being done to tackle the losses. When the money runs out the farm as a business and all its assets will ne repossessed and auctioned off to the highest bidder.The tenant will be ok as he has a lifetime tenancy of the property and the new owners wont be able to get rid of him either.
The friend and the other heirs will end up turfed out if they are living in houses owned by the business
Any money of their own they have sunk into the business will be gone.
If they don’t have receipts for the new kitchen and any work they have done in the other house (reclaimed the VAT etc) then they can wave goodbye to that money.

It sounds like these people don’t understand the difference between business and personal assets and depending how the business of the farm is set up they could end up losing any assets and monies they have to pay off creditors when the farm can no longer function.

This reminds me of someone I knew years ago who together with other siblings was left a business they knew nothing about. Within 3 years the successful business was bankrupt and as their homes even the furniture etc which was bought via the company credit card was gone.
Only because each spouse had been stashing away money each month from the day they married into the family saved them from being homeless

I wonder if your friend is having some form of mental breakdown through grief? You seem a kind person, so if you've Bern friends with him presumably you have valued his thoughts. So what has changed for this shocking behaviour to occur.

He's just the type of person that makes our world worse off. Can't he imagine if it was his elderly father or uncle? I think it's quite despicable and ruthless of him. I could never see him in the same way again.

OP, Just to let you know this story has now been picked up by the press - it's on MyLondon (don't want to give them clicks so I'm not linking directly)

The land agent will be very much in favour if evicting the elderly man—- modernise smaller properties and rent them on AST or even Airbnb to make money. They’re only interested in money, not people.
The cottage could well have an agricultural covenant on it. Possible it has a covenant as lifelong home for firmer worker.
As a pp said, I think you should befriend this early man, who sounds vulnerable, and help him access help via the local council, Age Concern or Shelter.

And no, I couldn’t remain friends with someone who behaves like this.

Thanks for letting me know. I might ask for this thread to be removed.

Not much to update but there are other obstacles to the eviction process, mainly that the house in question is not even part of my friend’s inheritance. My friend is challenging that and I have no idea how likely it is that he will succeed. The tenant has step children who are involved and aware, he is not without emotional support or legal representation.

I won’t cut this person out of my life completely but I do see him for what he is now and I don’t like it one bit. It is very reminiscent of the Trump book, Too Much But Never Enough. Not on the same sort of scale but his family shares those attitudes and traits. Thanks to everyone who shared their thoughts and advice here.

BUT MR SCROOGE! IT’S CHRISTMAS!!!

Send him an anonymous DVD of Scrooge in the post!

Love this!!! So glad the man is protected by law, he just needs someone to tell him and support him through it now. I suggest OP contacts the NFU as well as shelter as they are the housing experts

Your friend needs to come up with a compromise, so that he is happy but the man is adequately housed on the estate.
To do anything else is morally wrong.

OP's update states the friend does not even own the house, and has no right to rehouse the tenant.

The fact this person is trying to evict a person from a house that he doesn’t even own and the tenant he is trying to evict has more rights than him to be there indicates this person is a Prize Pillock with more money than brains and a sense of entitlement that makes me think that someone will play to his ego one day and he will be scammed big time because he thinks he is really really clever and everyone else are just pawns to move around at his will.

That is a massive update OP.

Good to know that the man has a support network.

I would stay friends with your mate just to leak information to the tennets relatives.

Even a “compromise “ of this type is morally wrong! The estate owner doesn’t need the worker’s house they have own perfectly good home. The original estate owner obviously wanted worker to remain housed. This is inheritance greed.

I would also be very concerned about a swap as this may be seen as a change in the terms and he could not only end up paying more rent but being evicted as it would/maybe seen as a new contract (depending on the terms)

Can the old man claim the house as his if it turns out that the previous owner didn't actually own it and as he's never been charged or asked rent.

I remember reading something about how if you’re occupying a property for 12 unbroken years and can prove it, and there’s no rent or contract, then the property becomes yours.

Best get legal advice on that, mind!