Inheritance

[familiesandmoney]

Families and money!

I live in England uk

My Grandmother owned a house with her partner
My Grandmother died in 2006, her partner lived in the house until he died last year.
she had 5 children one of which was my father. Apparently there was a will but this has been hidden by one of my family members. My siblings and myself are listed in the will.
My dad died in 2011 in awful circumstances.

My nans house has been just been sold and the money has been split between her 4 remaining children. They are denying there is a will. Is this correct?

I’m not interested in the money, although it would be extremely helpful at present but I’m really upset how sly everyone has been and all my cousins are aware of what’s happened.

"Because unless it was several hundreds of thousands, your share may not be worth the legal costs of pursuing it."

I would disagree. In the situation where an Administrator has not acted properly then, typically, they will be personally responsible and the OP would be able to claim legal costs from the Administrator personally, rather than from the estate.

Depending on just how badly the Administrator had acted, the OP would either be able to claim costs on an 'indemnity basis' (which, given what the OP has stated here, seems more likely) or on the 'standard basis'. The 'indemnity basis' basically allows the OP to recover all (or almsot all) of her legal costs from the Administrator personally rather than the estate.

Given that the Intestacy Rules (see Section 46(1)(ii) and Section 47(1)(i) Administration of Estates Act 1925**) clearly state what should happen, ie that the children of the deceased child will inherit in their place, and the Administrator has (according to the OP) blatantly ignored these rules, it would seem that the OP is likely in a very strong position.

** "...any child of the intestate who predeceases the intestate, such issue to take through all degrees, according to their stocks, in equal shares if more than one, the share which their parent would have taken if living at the death of the intestate"

Thank you everyone for all the advice. So I found out today that the house was shared between my Nan and her partner. This has been sold and the money split between both of their children. This all went through probate? There are details online for my nans partner which I will pay for today along with my nans information. I didn’t realise my nans partner had died early last year. I wasn’t told until Christmas time.

That is also odd. If they owned the house as joint tenants the house would have passed to grandmother’s partner under the principle of survivorship and would not have been part of the grandmother’s estate. The partner would then have left it to his beneficiaries when he died. Unless he specified in his will that the house was to be shared between his children and your grandmother’s.
It could be that he specified names of people to inherit and did not include a clause where a child of the named beneficiary would inherit the share in the event the beneficiary predeceased the testator ie your dad’s share would be distributed between other beneficiaries and not passed to his children.
If they owned the house as tenants in common then her share would have passed as part of the estate and would have been included when the grant of administration was applied for- ie no distribution now.
worth getting a copy of his will.