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

This is a hard one. If your Mum gives back the house she'll be hit with taxes, plus it's incredibly unlikely that the step mum will remember the other children in any will of hers - plus Step Mum is much younger. I think in this situation giving the step Mum notice but allowing for a 7 way split of assets would be fairest - so step Mum and the half sibling get something. Your Mum would be generous in this situation as she doesn't actually have to give anyone else who is not an owner anything.

No, your Mum is dead right- other than when the house is sold, the value should be divided in six.

Does your GF wish his children to get their fair share, or does he want to fuck then over one more time by giving it all to his youngest and expect them to go song with it. Either way you end up that the best solution is as it is currently set up.

I do wish people would stop spouting this shit. It only becomes deprivation of assets when it is deliberate and can be proven as such by the local authority. A child cannot be considered to be depriving themselves of assets, just in case they might need adult social care.
Age UK have a very useful fact sheet on this. It is highly unlikely anyone would be able to prove that a man who gave away his home over 25 years ago did it with an expectation of ever needing care.

https://www.ageuk.org.uk/siteassets/documents/factsheets/large-print-factsheets/fs40-lp-deprivation-of-assets-in-social-care.pdf

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.

May well have done it as some sort of tax dodge or attempt to get out of care home fees.

Oh what a tangled web we weave.

Anyway, all this happened before he met his new wife ? So she has known all along from the year dot (at least 25 years) that he didn't actually own the house, and at some point she may be asked to leave ?

If I were you, OP, I'd keep well out of this.

I'd take a back seat here. There's a lot you may not know - have your Mum / Uncle already 'spent' some of the value of this house they co-own e.g. loans secured against its value? Was it received as recompense for his lack of financial support when they were children? Your grandfather made a decision as an adult that he thought was in his financial interests but realises now was foolish. It's not your responsibility to make this better for him.

The only things I'd do if they are asking for your input is advise all of them to seek legal and financial advice (and pass in the points about IHT & CGT) and possibly make tentative suggestions about alternative compromises e g. House proceeds split 7 ways to include new wife and daughter. Ultimately though, unless your grandad has dementia it's for him and his children and wife to sort out this mess of their making.

Did I say it was deprivation of assets? Did I say it was illegal? No, I did not. It is however, coming back to bite him now that he wants to leave it to his wife instead. I said nothing about it being a problem in terms of paying care fees. And, given the comment about worrying about going to charity if he got sick, reasonable thought that it likely had to do with not paying care fees (if needed down the road) and/or inheritance taxes. Still not saying it was deprivation of assets or illegal.

Excellent advice. People fuck this sort of thing up all the time.

Putting al the legal stuff aside. It is a bit of a dick move by your mum & other sibling. Do they not have a good relationship with his wife & daughter?

Best advice on here. Stop meddling, OP, or it may come back to bite you.

The wife of 25 years and the father have had 25 years to plan their housing needs for their new family unit. I think its incredibly poor planning on their part if they have just bumbled along until now and then thought "shit, I'd better sort this out". What did they think would happen? I wouldn't start a family with a man in a house that neither of us owned! Did she know that he didn't own the house or is this news to her recently?

Presumably they have lived there rent free for all those years and could have saved their own nest egg and done their own future planning.

Also there's the tax issues that other people have said above.

I believe the new rules coming into place are that you have to show that the property is being sold under Section 8(?), e.g. marketed for sale. You have to give 4 months notice. Also you cannot re rent the property for 12 months (if it doesn't sell or if you were just trying to get tenants out).
In this case it sounds like the siblings will want to sell the property to distribute the money between them.
The father & his wife won't be paying rent or have a tenancy agreement i wouldn't have thought (no mention of this in the posts).
The house is no longer the father's asset - he gave it to his children over 25 years ago.

They are not "basically" the home owners. They are the home owners.

he didn’t want it to end up in a charity or whatever I don’t know
He didn't want it to have to be sold to pay for care if he needed it.

He gave the house to his two children. He cannot get it back and he cannot expect them to give it back either.

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.

You need to stay out of it. It's actually none of your business. And it isn't disgusting either. He chose to give them the house knowing the consequences of that and now it's wrong of him to be asking for it back.
He's lived in it rent free now for years. That means he and his new wife had plenty of opportunity to consider their finances, knowing that the house was not theirs, and to start saving money so that she would be provided for after his death. They could have bought their own property.

Once you give something away, it isn't yours any more and you can't ask for it back either.

They really do.

I can't see how your mum can return the house - can she afford the CGT without selling it? Then on his death there may well be IHT to pay although obviously depends on the value of the estate.

Legally: he’s given it to them already by the sounds of it, so not much he can do to get it back. Pretty sure HMRC takes a dim view of gifting a house to avoid tax then living in it…

Regarding your mum and sibling refusing to give it to the new wife - presumably she’s a similar age to them (or even younger?) so they know if she’s given it they won’t see any of their potential inheritance in their lifetime as it has been given to the new wife.

How old is your mum / the new wife?

Do you know what life was like for your mum and her siblings, or for your grandma, as a single mum of 5 whose husband had fucked off? You don’t even mention their childhood. What did they live on? How did she make a living? Who looked after the 5 kids while she did? How much of a living was it? What the kids at school said? How they felt? They might have been very high stress years, in fact statistically they probably were. he had a responsibility to his children and he abandoned that and left your grandma to carry it alone. I’d stay right out of this discussion, you weren’t there.

If your mums point of view is:
"he left when they were kids and this new child got more of him than they did growing up"
Then I can see why she is saying no.
I dont know the circumstances of your mums childhood, but this is exactly the kind of thing my parent would do.
They were a rubbish parent when we and my other parent needed them most, and no amount of niceties or 'everyone makes mistakes' since makes up for that for some of us. I admire people who can forgive and forget but I cant.

I can see why someone would think 'you abandoned us, got another family, we've stayed in your life despite of that, and now you want to give that other family everything you've got'

Also, i can see why it would rub people up the wrong way that he is showing sadness over this, when to be blunt, for 25 years he was happy to put avoiding tax etc above his wife's financial security, thats the bottom line here. No matter how lovely you think he is. He never once indicated he wanted the house back, because he was happy with the situation - if he cared about his wife's security, he would have had this conversation 25 years ago. It would have been one of the first things to talk about when they talked about getting married, or had a child! He has knowingly and wilfully been happy for his wife to have no guarantees after his death, this entire time.

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.

You don't sound like the daughter of the person he gave a house to by the way. Are you sure you're not the child of the second marriage?

What is not mentioned here is what the mortgage position was on the house at the time of transfer. Only that he paid the mortgage off (at some unspecified time before he met DW2). If he continued paying a mortgage on it after title transfer then I think that affects the figures at least.

I would have thought that the sensible solution would be for your DM to rent the house to DW2 for a notional income for 25 years (or until her death).

That would allow for CGT to be deferred decades and the resulting income could be shared amongst all siblings.

Eventually the house can be sold and the monies divided equally between all his grandchildren.

My sympathies are with the children your grandfather deserted when they were young, and the wife who was left to bring them up alone.

Yes. That suggests the only option was to give the house away before you die or the house gets given away to some nebulous organisation after you die.

has he not heard of the concept of a will?

but agree with others, he doesn’t have a house and that surely isn’t news to his wife unless he’s lied either deliberately or by omission.

people don’t put houses in other peoples names unless they think they are avoiding something usually. I’m a cynic but he’s thought he’s being a clever so and so but sadly not thought it through.

There is of course the alternative option, where the house gets signed back/was never signed over in the first place, and the grandfather dies and the wife gets everything and leaves it entirely to her own kid and none of the other 5.

They just ended up on the wrong side of the trade.

The thing that strikes me is that your mum and siblings might have had quite a tough time growing up. There might have been quite a stigma for them all and your gran in their situation at that time. Obviously I don’t know the full story and you might not too. Just because they’ve done well in life doesn’t mean growing up wasn’t hard. I’d leave it alone.

If second wife has been with him 25 yrs and has not made provision for herself at all in this time I don’t feel that sorry for her . Marrying someone with a previous family / children was always going to come up against this at some point . The easiest solution is to sell the house and split it between everyone including his widow but it doesn’t sound as if your mum is amenable to this .

@whattodo1113 you really need to see and understand this.
It could have significant impllications for the remainder of his estate which he needs to understand.

Also, if your mum and her sibling also own other houses, there will be CGT to pay on the sale of the house when the time comes.