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

All I can think when I read these posts is this is such a class issue. Before baby boomers normal people rarely had an inheritance to pass down and now they usually have the home they live in (which weirdly- they’ve all “worked so hard” to pay off - aka had a job) the end of life hysteria about inheritance is real.
With no (actual) wealth or contacts with which to get real beneficiary tax avoidance advice they try these weird workarounds that “sound at the time” like they should work then end their life as a stressed guilty split and awkward family trying to pick through the crisis of someone’s 3 bed semi as though they’re the Duke of Westminster

I am praying my parents and in-laws don’t hit us with this shit (in laws are always trying)

As the siblings are already in their 60's, then it is possible they might die before the second wife, so I guess they want the money while they are still around to use it and not have to wait until she dies, while also paying to maintain the property.

Telling someone that they are going to kick you out of the home you have lived in for the last 25 years with their husband isnt a dick move?

Your mother should allow your step mum use of the house until she passes at the very least. 2 years is ridiculous and cruel.

It sounds like the step mum is a similar age to the eldest children, if they let her stay for life they’re unlikely to get any benefit from owning the house

Sadly it seems legally your granddad can't make them sign the house back over however i do think legal advice should be sought as they've lived in the property so I'm sure there's some sort of rights of interest or something at stake.

The problem here is that your grandfather (and possibly your mum and her siblings too) have been trying to have their cake and eat it. When you do that and it involves property it gets very complicated very fast. Your grandfather wanted his children to own the house when it suited him (presumably for tax reasons) and yet wanted to retain the use of it for him and his (new) family. Does your mum own other property? Did she properly declare and pay the right tax/duties on her “second” home if so?

There can be expensive implications from giving young (ish) people property that they’re not going to live in. It stops them being first-time buyers for their actual home. Who pays the council tax in the house your grandfather lives in? Is it in an area with increased council tax for “second homes” and if so has that being declared and paid properly? etc. etc.

An awful lot of people showing they know absolutely NOTHING about the law, inheritance, tax or home ownership here.

OP mother owns the house not the grandfather, whoever paid it off circa 30 years ago does not matter it was legally gifted to them (there is no other way to transfer ownership unless they paid in which case they bought it). The cost of home ownership has then been on the OPs mother and attempting to get the house back is HIGHLY ILLEGAL.

The grandfather hid his assets from the tax man by transferring all the negatives to his children. They are not getting a 'free' house, it has cost them for over 25 years.

OP grandfather is a con man, theres no debating that. He tried to get around the law by putting his kids on the hook and they haven't played ball at their own loss.

Maybe he saw them upset when he left them and moved on with another family, and as an adult who had control of the situation, his upset is less important than that of his children.

They are doing nothing wrong.

What sort of a father gifts something to his children and then wants it back to give to someone else? This is not a man who is deserving of sympathy, even if he did become a bit nicer in old age.

And you’re showing you know nothing of LEGAL vs MORAL. Most people seem aware of the legalities. It’s the morality that some of us are questioning.

Posters and @whattodo1113 are being incredibly naive with signing assets over. It is not that simple. The house was signed over previously to basically dodge care home fees etc. Just signing it back generates problems in terms of capital gains on house value (will grandfather cover those costs which could be significant) and obviously there is future IHT implications. Everyone concerned needs to get tax advice on this.

AIBU - inheritance sad story

This isn't a sad story.

This is a story of selfishness that came back to bite him in the bum.

Well now his “cleverness” is coming home to him. He gets what he deserves.

Except it's his wife who will be left homeless & he won't be getting any deserts!

There no right of interest, OPs mother doesn't owe the wife anything as she is not her dependent.

Family law is for spouses or dependents (such as underage children or lifelong disabled and was reliant on homeowners care/finance family etc...).

I lived in my rental for over 15 years, If I die do you think my landlord would have let my kids live their until 18 or death? no of course they wouldn't.

perhaps he does not appreciate what it would cost his children to give it back.

Or perhaps he doesn't care. He seems to have done a lot for his own selfish wishes over the years, leaving his wife and five children, and the signing over of the house certainly wasn't done for anyone's benefit but his own, or at least so he must have thought at the time.

Given the approximate age of the last child, his second wife may still be of working age. I suppose he might have lied to her about the house, in which case i feel some sympathy, but otherwise no. OP's mother is probably older than her, and frankly owes her nothing.

To be fair we are only assuming he did this to avid care home fees. He did it 25 years ago when care home fees was barely a conversation, so he had bizarre foresight if he did.

IHt, maybe

Wow, bit harsh! He married her, she had his child who is now grown up-must be 30 ish if grandad had him in his late 50s and is now 85. Possibly (probably) the wife is now of retirement age and would surely expect to inherit their house where they've lived since she married him/brought up their child. Legally, it's tough on her, morally, I'd be raging in her position at the thought of being made homeless/kicked out of the house she has presumably lived in/maintained for 30 years.

Yes the grandfather is wholly immoral screwing over his children financially and dodging taxes.

On what planet are you attempting to defend this man.

But this woman has had 25 years of living (knowingly, I think?) in a house that neither she nor her husband own. Does that not strike you as a strange thing to do as a woman? To be that completely apathetic about your own future and the security of your child. She and the husband could have saved and got their own place together. Instead he says "don't worry, my kids that I abandoned will sign my house back over to me when the time comes"?. Could you live like that? With your entire future based upon what his grown up children may or may not do? I think the wife should have thought about herself and her own child in all of this. She strikes me as very passive in this situation and is now panicking in later life, realising that she wasted the earning / saving potential she had in the last 25 years.

I see both POVs, but was he devastated to up and leave his wife and 5 kids back in the day??

Maybe he didn’t tell her

maybe she came from nothing and was just happy to live in a free house

The way I see it, the grandfather and the younger second wife had all that time without rent. So the sensible thing to do, knowing that the home they were living in was not theirs and had been signed over to two of the 5 children (which is odd in itself) would have been to save the 'mortgage' portion of their money, which between two of them, even with p/t work could have been £500-1000 a month, and invested in another property somewhere, or just saved it in high interest accounts, shovelled it into a pension.

They had more money this way, but none at the end. Nearly 30 years of income, without crazy outgoings, it should have been a priority to have saved and invested this into a nest egg for the second wife.

I have friends whose partners do not own their house/it's already gone to other family members and that's what they do if honourable- make sure the disadvantaged person who won't be getting the inheritance saves their money and invests it in their own property- the second wife could have her own house by now!

You don’t say anything about where your Grandma & her 5 children had to live once your Grandfather had left them? I can’t imagine having to look after that many children singlehanded.

With the collapse in pensions, massive increase in educational costs and huge increases in house prices for many inheritance is the only way they can maintain a decent lifestyle - the equivalent of a lottery win.

Not really surprising that people are going to fight tooth and nail over it.

This all sounds quite strange. He gave his house away for reasons that aren’t clear and now he has changed his mind and wants it back. It sounds like he may not have a great father to your mother even if he was a good grandfather to you. I would stay out of it.