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 had the exact same thought...

It’s astonishing that it’s been 30 ish years and in that time, he hasn’t thought practically about the financial future of his wife or 6th child. It’s not like this happened 2 years ago. It’s been like 3 decades he’s had to sort this and hasn’t and now it’s created a big mess for everyone.

He really wasn't trying to avoid his money going to charity - sounds like he was trying to avoid inheritance tax, in a crazy way that just didn't work.

Or perhaps his ex-wife wanted to ensure that her children got the house, so took the transfer of the house to her kids, rather than on-going maintenance, not trusting him not to change a will he made to leave it to her children. I'm guessing it went to oldest two as over 18.

As PPs have pointed out, it's a complete mess, OPs mother needs legal advice, as does the grandfather.

I feel very sorry for his second wife, who could end up homeless.

I don't see how it's a dick move. What move did they make? They didn't create this situation.

Exactly this.

You are a much nicer person than your mum and her sibling

Your mum and the other owner of the house need legal and tax advice asap.
Perhaps they might consider 'giving' the house back if their dad would cover the CGT costs? Or perhaps they would be willing now to set up a long-let tenancy agreement (you'd need advice on this) so he and his wife pay rent to the owners of the property in return for them retaining ownership. That may make it a bit simpler to sort out in terms of IHT (again, take advice on this - I am only thinking aloud and am not an expert) if it's clearly been rented to the current occupiers for a number of years before your grandfather's death.

Well that’s ok then as the most important thing in the world is to be seen as nice.

Because the new wife has no rights. She’s not a tenant.

All this squabbling and speculation about motivations and who the OP is and whether someone's being a dick is totally irrelevant.

The first and only thing anyone in that family should be doing right now is taking legal and tax advice.

You need to understand the current position and potential liabilities, and what options are available.

Until that point, everything else is useless chatter.

Your father, his wife, and your mother / aunts and uncles MUST take professional advice.

Why? She's not giving up anything - very possible her mum and her sibling would be just as willing for the OP to give up her own money as she is for them to give up theirs.

Yep, if anything they've been very generous. Two years free rent and transfer of some of the value to an adult child who doesn't own the house is a considerable kindness.

Legal v Moral

Sounds like legally he doesn’t own the house anymore.
Morally your mum and her siblings stance is unacceptable to him and you, but not to them.

Not a great situation for his wife, but assuming she knew the arrangement for the last 25 years.

As your Mum and siblings are in their sixties there was very little in the way of welfare when they were children. It would have been a very tough upbringing. People are horrified that people have to go without heating these days, at that point in time many only had a fire in one room if they were poor.

He needs proper legal advice as pointed out CGT could be due. my DH is a joint owner of his Mothers house and has been for 35 years, he was a student then. Of course he is now liable for CGT when sold and yes she was trying to avoid inheritance tax. Of course he will now receive less due to his Mothers stupidity, he did not even sign anything.

These things are happening more and more as people go on to have long second marriages which are sometimes longer than the first. The desire to give the home to the children of the first marriage then gets supplanted by the length of time and offpring of the second- and everyone feels morally they are due something (two long marriages, two lots of children).

I agree with the person who said seek legal and tax advice as at the moment, you are all opining in the dark. All parties need this advice, it sounds like the grandfather has taken it and doesn't like what he heard, but perhaps he does not appreciate what it would cost his children to give it back.

Of course he will now receive less due to his Mothers stupidity, he did not even sign anything.

1. how did his name get on there if he didnt sign it - was it fraud?
2. he owns an asset - is it worthless? (edit) does owning half take it below IHT?

(edit) I'd be more worried about Stamp Duty on a second home than CGT to be honest

It would be interesting to know whether she did or not!

Because he would have gifted it to child 1 and 2 and subsequently lived for the necessary 7 years AND as such it is legally belongs to child 1 and 2.

Just to add to my previous post post, if your Mum and her siblings are all in their 60s, they will have factored the money from the house sale into their retirement financial planning. It's not like basing their financial planning on a vague promise of inheritance. They already own the house. There are a lot of apparently comfortable 60s living on savings pre-pension age who couldn't easily swallow a sudden £50-100K hole in their finances (assuming 1/5 of average house prices). To keep family harmony, they all need to do some serious thinking and get advice to work out a way of ensuring everyone's future security as far as they can. It's not just whether they give back the house or not. It's not your problem to solve though. They are adults, some if whom will be financially savvy.

There's clearly a lot of info missing to this. His kids obviously don't think much of him and also feel as though he didn't care about them when he started his new family. Maybe there's plenty of good reasons why they don't care what happens to his wife.

If he is as good a person as OP says, it's hard to imagine that he never told her who owned their home. I also don't know why they didn't look ahead when they married and had a child; prior families can complicate matters like this.

Edit, didn't mean to use past tense.

Sorry for my stupidity here but is this a will, or did he gift the house to his children already?

If he gifted the house to his children then he can’t have it back, him and his new family have lived there rent free all these years?

Thats tough luck and he made his decision, his children were given a gift and he can’t just take it back.

if it’s a will, then he can’t just do a new one.

Could a compromise be that the wife gets to live there for life (but not if she moves or remarries), then the house is sold and the proceeds split between all 6 children?

It would need to be drawn up by a solicitor and made legally enforceable, of course.

It might be worth the two older siblings being reminded that, without the new wife, the father might be spending his final years in a horrible care home (council choice if council funded), unhappy and far away from loved ones.

How nice for that woman to be living rent free in the house with her daughter for 25 years with a part time job. That must have been lovely for her.

Now she wants to keep the house that belongs to his children? I don’t think so.

Does GF wife and child number 6, know he doesn’t own the property and that children 1 and 2 are the joint owners?

Have I missed the explanation as to why children 1 and 2 own the property and children 3,4 and 5 were excluded.