Renovate family home v selling as it is

[Thefirstwifesyndrome]

My question is more an ethical not legal one. My former husband runs a business as a contractor. My parents house is in testate. The beneficiaries are discussing renovation to get more money out of estate. Should my ex husband offer his services free or should we pay him to do renovation?

Of course you should pay him!
Do you mean your parents died intestate, i.e. without wills?

Why would your former husband do work for free? Of course he should be paid.

Why on earth wouldn't you pay him? Why would he do it for free?

Ha ha, I mean if your ex is willing to do the work for free, why not? But I can’t see that really happening, can you? By all means if you had an amicable divorce, and trust him to do a good job for a fair rate, ask him for a quote.

He's your ex-husband and I assume, not a beneficiary. You can ask, but I don't see any reason why he would give his time for free. Surely he is busy earning his own living.

If your shared children are the beneficiaries, then he might. Under those circumstances if I were him, I would help fix any obvious issues to make it saleable, but expect you to do your fair share in terms of cleaning the house thoroughly, before putting it on the market.

Why on earth would you expect your ex to do it for free? You shouldn’t even expect him to do it for free if you were still married!

Unless he bled you and your family dry when you were married there's no way I would even be considering asking him to do it for nothing. And if he's not getting paid, how will the people doing the work pay their bills, would he be paying them out of his own pocket? It wouldn't just turning up with an already owned hammer and giving up time willingly.

Renovations are bloody expensive as are materials, the beneficiaries might not make that much more of a 'profit' as it sounds like they see it.

Does your ex husband want to give his time for free to these people?

have you considered whether improving the house will have tax implications?

Your heading doesn’t reflect the question in the text.

If you mean should your ex-husband be paid for any renovation work he organises or should he do it for free, my answer is he should definitely be paid by the beneficiaries, otherwise they (not just you) are benefitting at his expense. Presumably he would otherwise be able to use those workers (or himself) on paying jobs. If he/his workers would otherwise be idle through lack of business, that’s different, though he should still charge for materials.

However, if you are all on good terms I think it would be nice if he didn’t charge normal rates, just 'mates rates' - enough to cover his costs and make just a small profit (to compensate for the other work he’d be having to turn down to do this job). But he’s under no moral obligation to do this, even if the beneficiaries are his and your DC.

Re the question in the heading: that’s something an estate agent ought to advise you about.

I would get an estate agent round to see if it's worth spending money on renovations as it may not add that much value. Also you have to pay capital gains tax from the gain when you acquire the property to when you sell it.
No he shouldn't do the renovations for free though.

They may not make alot of profit at all from renovations People like to put their own stamp on things. Near me people are buying houses and doing massive retrofits on them. The constant building work is driving me mad.

We were in similar situation with late FIL house. My DH originally put central heating in, bathroom and kitchen. Some 25 years later when he died, the whole house potentially needed updating and DH was going to do it all, but we got an Estate Agent round who showed us details of other properties like ours, he said people want properties that they can do up, not expensive show houses. The house sold for full asking price, first day to the very first viewers. At first we thought materials would be around £35,000 just for new boiler, kitchen, bathroom, doors, carpets, garage door, windows, redecorating, but when you start thinking this, you are looking at least 6 months free labour, we definitely wouldn’t have made any more profit.

I intend to do my fair share of house clearing/cleaning. Our son is beneficiary too. Thanks for comment.

1 parent died without a will and more recent death has a will.

Are you asking your ex husband willing to work for months for free? How will he pay his bills? Would you have the same number of months of your wages paid directly into his account?

Sam komstantas thanks for ypur comprehemsove reply. We have commenced work and payments that are agreeable to both parties. And itsalljusttoomuchtoday I know it seemed wrong not paying him something. It was only that a previous ex did lots of work for both his and my parents at weekends for nothing. AdmIttedly he had another full time job. So that was my only comparison. And once I had written it down and mulled it over, it did seem unfair not to pay my former husband for
doing the work.