leasehold / freeholder dispute over unclearly demised area on the plans/deeds

[Feebs7]

Hi all,

I'm contacting for advice on behalf of my elderly mum. She lives in a ground floor flat , in a house conversion (end of terrace). Her freeholder lives in the flat upstairs.

The area under the ground floor stairs - has been boarded up so that it can be used as a cupboard which can be accessed from the communal side passage.

Mums leases and deeds are unclear about who owns the cupboard.

We think at some point it was a shared cupboard, as it can be accessed by both flats, but mums never had the key.

We think that when the previous owner of my mums flat died - the freeholder updated his own lease and freehold to include the cupboard as solely his - as at that point nobody could dispute it.

However, when my mum bought the flat - there is no wording at all referring to who the cupboard belongs to, the area under the stairs has been hatched in as belonging to mum, with only an intelligible blob on her lease plan, written over the area under the stairs.

Is there any cheap way to find out who the area under the stairs belongs to?? 👀

If the title plan is unclear, and amendments have been made to the freehold and leases over the years and between occupants, you’ll need a specialist property solicitor to review the freehold and leases and any alterations to each flat’s title and curtilage which have been lodged with the Land Registry. A freeholder cannot unilaterally amend a lease, so when you say that the freeholder “updated his own lease and freehold” it sounds as though he came to an agreement with the previous leaseholder to remove the cupboard from their demise, but that this hasn’t been accurately reflected in the title for your mum’s flat. It could be easy to get to the bottom of and rectify and relatively inexpensive - or it could not be. Your mum will have to decide what her end game is (does she want access to a shared cupboard accessed from a communal area, or does she want sole access) and how much she wants it. From the description of its location, I would assume that this was at one point intended to be a communal cupboard, so the outcome will hinge on whether there’s been a valid alteration to the leases to change that.

Suffering from serious deja vu here. Have I seen this exact same post x3 times?

I was going to say the same.
I am sure you have posted about this at least once and had plenty of advice

How long has she lived there, why is it an issue now, and haven't you asked about this several times before, or is there lots of women with a cupboard issue? If the deeds aren't clear, then it SIL likely be difficult to prove, is access to it worth that?

Yes - sorry - the legal action went away, after mum reinstated the stair cupboard - which had previously been used by the freeholder, which mum then changed for her sole use following bad advise from her conveyancing solicitor.

However, the freeholder appears to have seen mums act - of reinstating the stair cupboard for his sole use - as submission, as he is now trying to encroach on mums demise in other areas of her home now.
i.e. the front garden and the communal hallway which he only has a right of passage to, but has tried to use it as his further storage area.

I think it woould help mums position, to have knowledge of who actually owns the stair cupboard, as her reinstating it does not mean that it belonged to him - she just reinstated it, as she did not want to go to Court and incur unknown legal costs.

You’ve had so much advice about this blinking cupboard on a lengthy thread previously, starting a new thread about it is just going to mean you get all the same advice again as well as having to provide lengthy explanations about the whole thing. It cannot be that difficult to establish from land registry documents who owns which areas of the properties. At this point you need to contact a solicitor for proper advice, ideally not the one who seemed to provide you with some kind of verbal advice before and then change their mind although from memory I think that was probably a paralegal in a solicitors office and I don’t think you actually paid for the advice?