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

Yanbu. Your mum and her siblings’ behaviour is awful (in any circumstance, but especially as they don’t need the money).

Sadly I don’t think there’s anything you can do as it’s already legally theirs but yes they’re behaving very badly. I would understand more if this woman has swept in a few years ago, right at the end of his life, but the fact is she’s been a caring wife for 25 years and they have a child together.

How sad. In a world of any morals, the house would be signed back over. The wife would live in the house until her passing and then the proceeds would be split between your dad’s 6 children.
I’d be horrified with my mum.

This.

Rent free? Her husband paid for the house. Come off it.

So she lived in the house for free for 25 years.

Are they planning to give the youngest half sibling her share?

I think it does sound all a bit rubbish

Obviously I don't know but it doesn't sound like he was trying to avoid nursing home fees etc.

Your grandad thought he was a clever man. He thought he could dodge his responsibilities to his children by leaving them and starting fresh. Then he thought he could dodge paying tax by fiddling the system. Well now his “cleverness” is coming home to him. He gets what he deserves.

Mmm, but I'm not sure OPs description is entirely to be trusted. I agree that it was stupid for them not to look ahead, or DGF at least. But then people have a remarkable capacity to bury their heads in the sand.

I expect the siblings have already taken professional tax advice hence their stance! The OP describes her mother/uncle as having 'done well for themselves' so I doubt after 25 years ownership they are unaware of the CGT implications raised on this thread.

Yes but he gave it away, he lived in it for free despite not owning it. And so did his wife.

Yes he did own it once but then he gave it away. I think he made a bad decision.

Having done well for themselves doesn't mean they know anything about CGT, IHT, deprivation of assets rules, or property law.

Everyone involved needs to take professional advice to understand the tax implications of their current situation and the legal implications of the house ownership and who can live in it. And then once that is understood they can try to find a way forward.

As your Mum and siblings are in their sixties there was very little in the way of welfare when they were children.

Utter bollocks. The 1960s were hardly Dickensian. We had the full welfare state.

This could be deemed very dodgy.

For you grandfather the tax man will see it as a way to hide wealth, a deprivation of assets.

For your mam it will have cost her money. If they own their own houses then they will have double liabilities for owning two homes, if the tried to buy houses after they would lose their 'first' status all for zero gain just to have it taken back.

What you grandfather is trying to do is illegal.

Yep. This. 99% of the time it backfires.

You may want to encourage them to look further into this because depending on home value and their own cash liquidity, they may not even be able to give her 2 years. CGT is fine, as that’s not payable until the property is sold (and as others have said, they can’t transfer it back to your grandad as over 25 years of house price rises, the CGT due will be huge), but if he’s lived there rent free since he transferred ownership and that is picked up, they’ll end up liable for IHT as well. If they aren’t planning to sell immediately, they’d need to be able to pay that out of their own pockets in the interim.

The likelihood is that if that happens, they won’t pay it - they’ll sell the house straight away to cover it (and understandably so). So she needs to be aware of, and have a chance to plan for, this possibility.

Fault here lies 100% with your grandfather - he created this mess, which they can’t actually get out of even if they did want to. Don’t blame your mum.

If it was me (I was your Mum), I epumd let his wife live in the property until death. The house would then be sold and split 6 ways.

Karma may come back to haunt them if they go ahead with their plan.

Did your mum say the five children, or does she plan on including their half sister? (they should IMO).

This wasn't done to stop 'the house going to charity', it was done to avoid taxes and responsibilities, but this is the risk you take, legally the two children could have evicted them all 25 years ago and not batted an eyelid as it is their house to do with as they wish, it would be morally wrong but once it is gifted they are under no obligation to return that gift.

Where is all his money and assets from the last 25 years of marriage? He hasn't been paying any accommodation fees, so surely there must be more than just the house, if he died any time in the last couple of decades, or if your mum and sibling died they would potentially have been made homeless anyway, so why is it so important now?

I feel like you don't know enough about the situation to make an informed assessment and are going on gut feeling, have you actually spoken to your mum about it?

They're being despicable.

The value of the house split 5 ways to households already well off isn't worth the loss of a home to someone who has lived there as your grandads wife for 25 years with a child of their own together.

How can they see him so upset and not give the legal rights to his own house back to him? Awful.

25 years or so ago, your grandad decided to dispose of his assets. Presumably to avoid future care home fees/tax. When he did this he was not a vulnerable elderly man. He was a middle aged man trying to circumvent the system. Unfortunately for him, he placed his trust in the wrong people and its backfired. Presuming he signed the house over legally, there's nothing he can do now. Yes, his eldest children are behaving badly, but this is the risk you take when you try to 'hide' your assets to avoid them being used for care.

I actually think you're wrong OP, you weren't there when they were growing up and don't know what they went through when the parents split up.
Your grandfather signed over the house to avoid tax, so he really doesn't have a right to moan about it now. I also think all his children deserve monies from the house, not just his current wife and their child. Why should the other 4 be left out?
I think the right thing to do would be to extend the 2 years. Did his new wife ever work herself?

He left their mum when they were small kids.. I feel like there may be more to this backstory which could be driving this decision, especially based on the comment that he gave more of himself to his new family.. sounds like some resentment from decisions made in the past which were outside of their control.

If he left their mum alone and destitute to bring up 5 kinds alone, then I don't have that much sympathy for him now, he should have been thinking about this 25 years ago when deciding to re-marry and have another child, and what the future would hold for them if anything happened to him.

OP has conveniently skipped that entire part of the back story.

Morally, this is a shitty thing to do. I wouldn’t do something this and would be really disappointed in my Mum if she did it too.

However, it was done initially to avoid paying for care etc etc so you could see it as that is what can happen to you when you try and cheat the system.

How do you know they are well off ?

I'm pretty sure if you asked a lot of my relatives whether I was well off they would say yes, and if there was 100K up for grabs they would say that they were more deserving of it than me and I don't need it at all and they should have it instead.

It may not be life changing for me, but that doesn't mean I couldn't use money and do something interesting and fun with it though.

And no one knows the amount of money at stake here or the state of the other peoples finances, if it is a SE house it could easily be half a million split between the children so not necessarily pin money.

People who say other people are well off and don't need money are often making snap judgements as they aren't always privvy to the detail of other peoples finances. Some people may look rich but may have massive debts.

Most people have a use for money somewhere unless they are absolutely awash with the stuff.

This happened to someone I know. They didn't even give her the two years that their dad had requested, she was given 6 weeks while grieving for her partner of 25 years.

The house is on the market now and it's so sad to see all her furniture ( they wouldn't even let her take that as she couldn't prove she bought any of it)

For 25 years she had Christmas with these people and they basically turned on her, threatening her and not caring where she went.

Totally agree with this.
Need to also add OP doesn’t seem to be able to empathise with how her own mother must have felt as a child. Losing her father running away leaving his wife to look after 5 children on her own, & especially OP’s DM being the oldest & probably feeling she had to help her Mum & missed her childhood. That’s just skimming the surface!
You never forget how awful you felt as that child, maybe the new woman shouldn’t have stolen the Dad?