AIBU - inheritance sad story

[whattodo1113]

I’m going to break this down as easily as possible.

my grandad who is now 86 had 5 children. (The eldest is my mum)
he split up with my grandma when the children were young.
all the children are now obviously grown up in their 60s.
all of them have wife’s / husbands and their own children. They ALL live good lives and have done well for themselves are by NO means hard up.

my grandad has worked hard all his life and paid his house off etc and was alone for a long long time with not much quality of life. He then met someone and married her and had a daughter later on in life when he was late 50s. This child is grown up now too. He is still with his wife now and has been for 25 years ish. Sorry my numbers aren’t the best and it’s not really relevant.

the whole family welcomed wife and the new child and I must say she’s always been lovely she’s a lovely woman. The daughter they had I loved and still do very much. My grandad has always been a good grandad to us. I have fond memories with him and I love him loads.

so here’s the crunch….
before he met his wife he put his house in the 2 eldest children’s names (my mum included) his train of thought was if anything happened to him or he got ill etc they’d have that house and all those things and he didn’t want it to end up in a charity or whatever I don’t know.

3 years ago as he’s getting very old now he asked them to sign the house back to him as his wife has lived there with him 25 years now and it’s her HOME and their daughter lives there too. She works part time. He’s obviously planning not being here anymore
they have refused him the house and have said when he dies she can stay for 2 years to get on her feet and find somewhere then they will sell it and split the money between the 5 children.

there argument is he left when they were kids and this new child got more of him than they did growing up.
I personally think this is very revengeful of my mum and greedy and not morally right? My grandad is very depressed and cries and I just hate that this is how the end of his life looks. He said his wife has been there the most for him and loved and looked after him and she’s gonna be left in a mess when he goes and she’s doesn’t deserve it. Which I agree.

I’ve told my mum it’s his house. He paid for it. He worked for it. Give it him back. Am I being soft ?? What do you think?? I just personally feel disapointed in them.
may I add nobody visited him often or cared to see him much but they want his house and money?

they’ve all said wife will have his pension that’s enough. Which is about 500 a month I think.

I just can’t stop thinking about him and I’m the only one in the family who has said how he’s being treated is discusting. They think he’s cruel taking the house back but at the end of the day he bought the house and his life situations have changed now and all the kids are so well off with their own businesses etc they don’t NEED it. Xxx

I would stay out of it if I was you. Your mum obviously has her reasons for feeling as she does and as other posters have said she may even have financial reasons for not returning the house, such as taxes and maybe her current assets are leveraged against the ownership of this house.

You sound lovely, OP. Inheritance threads are usually by people complaining they haven't received as much as they hoped for. Well done for taking your step-grandmother's side -- your grandfather sounds like a negligent parent but it wasn't her fault, she wasn't an OW.
Sorry I haven't any useful advice to give.

If they are married she will have a life interest in the property won't she? So they can't sell untill she passes. Check with a solicitor but I'm sure there's case law to this effect.

Wow your mum and uncle aunt are vile !

Because they aren't prepared to pay a large tax bill in order to correct their father's error and in doing so disinherit themselves and their children?

There is no case law to the effect that being married to someone gives you a life interest in property they don't own.

But the grandfather doesn't own the house, so why would being married to him give her a life interest in the house?

His 2nd wife should get life interest to the house or until she establishes a new relationship.

my concern, based on family experience, would be what sort of pressure is he experiencing from her at this stage? Surely she knew the ownership of the house when she moved in?

I can understand the original intent of wanting to ensure his kids inherit the property.

That’s what wills are for.

If the wife were 80 then I would agree with her being allowed to live there for her lifetime but she is in all likelihood in her late 50's early 60's and younger than the children who own the house. If they sign the house back they could be looking at 100k in capital gains tax if in the south based on 30 years of price increases and 28% tax and if the children are near retirement age they may not be able to afford to return the house. The wife didn't contribute to the purchase of the house and has lived rent and mortgage free most of her adult life. They could have saved for this eventuality.

It sounds like a poorly thought out plan to transfer the property in the first place and the cynical side of me thinks maybe he did it to avoid paying out care home fees which ironically probably would be contested anyway. This sounds like a gift with reservation of benefits so in terms of IHT depending on value your mum and aunt/uncle may end up with a large tax bill.

I think an amicable arrangement should be sought with all parties as his wife could be difficult with moving out which could involve costly legal battles with all the family fallout which goes with that but you could also argue that he gifted it to two of his children and they are offering to share with other three so they are at least offering compromises. From the sound of it the stepmother is not a gold digger marrying a much older man on the assumption he would ensure her financial security. Did she not bring any assets to the marriage? Legal advice for your DGF and your DM sounds essential but this cannot be helping family relationships. I don't envy you getting caught between the two but cant help thinking that you should leave it to them to sort out.

This is why you shouldn't put your home in anyone else's names- make a will, don't sign anything over.

GF should see a solicitor. There would probably be tax implications if the 2 house owners just gave the house to the wife, but they could agree a life interest for her. I think your mum and her sibling are being cruel but they're obviously bitter that their father abandoned their mother and this is the only way they can see to punish him. Wife and youngest daughter are just caught in the crossfire.

No, because it’s not her husband’s house. He’d given it away before he even met her.

The children have not contributed to the house either and have no more right than the wife . It’s up to him and him alone to whom he wants the house to be left too.

They have significantly more right than both their father and his wife. They legally own the house.

He already made the choice to sign it over to them decades ago. He doesn’t own a house now to leave to anyone.

Nope - he, willingly, gave up that right when he gave the house to his children. Or, rather, he made that decision 25 years ago and that choice was to leave it to his children (by giving it to them).

So you think leaving it just to 2 children is ok too ? What about his other children ? He probably did it to protect assets , not for them to steal it from the rest of his family

That’s between them 🤷🏻‍♀️

The ‘moral’ rights and wrong don’t come into it, only the legalities matter here. Whatever his motivation, he chose to give his house away to two of his children. He no longer gets a say over what happens to a house he doesn’t own.

Did I say it was okay? No, I did not. What I said is that he made his choice so your comment that it is, now, up to him is wrong. If giving it to only two children was a wrong move, that's on him, not his children.

But it is the moral thing the op is here to discuss .

Even there, the morality is on the grandfather. He choose to try to hide the asset of his house and it is coming back to bite him.

From a moral standpoint, the grandfather made a ham fisted attempt at getting one over on HMRC and is now trying to backtrack because it hasn’t worked as he intended.

He chose to only sign it over to two of his children.

His two children giving it back could easily cost them many tens of thousands in CGT. Op made no mention of him offering to cover this.

His two children, if they had wanted to, could have kicked him, his wife, and his child out at any point from the time it became their property. They haven’t. If they were the immoral thieves they’re being presented as, you’d have thought this would have been the first thing they did.

I was also wondering if the wife knew their house wasnt actually theirs.
It was very good of you all to persuade your dad to leave the house he was leaving to you to his second wife. But realistically that means that what your dad worked for will be going down his second wifes side of the family after her death rather than down yours. It was a lot for you all to give up. She and her family must have meant a great deal to you.

Wills can be contested, especially by dependents. Also, he probably wanted it sorted before he even met someone new. It's just a possibility anyway as OP doesn't have the full story.