Probate/land registry

[Freeyourmind]

Realise we will need proper legal advice but interested to know if anyone has had any general experience of this.

My uncle has died, he left a will, all fine. However, it seems that when his father died (approx 10years ago) he never did any probate on his fathers estate. He would have been sole beneficiary if there was no will, he was an only child, but it means that the house he lived in has never been registered in his name. We have found the original deeds to the property. Would it just be a case of approaching land registry and asking them how to deal with this? Presumably we have to sort the ownership of the house out before we can start the probate?

Any ideas?

No, it’s not something the land registry can deal with; the executors of your uncle’s estate will need a specific type of grant (a grant de bonis non) to be able to deal with the property. It would be a good idea to take legal advice.

A grant de bonis non is only required when the sole or last surviving Executor or Administrator dies (or loses mental capacity) after they have taken out the grant of representation, and they have no will. This is because the “chain of administration” is broken.

so as OP says uncle never took out a grant for his father then this kind of grant is not required.

I had this recently as an executor of my late in laws. When FIL died a few years ago everything passed to MIL under the will and we didn’t realise we still had to apply for probate.

When MIL died recently, the solicitor doing probate for MIL also dealt with the probate for FIL retrospectively. It wasn’t an issue, just took a little longer to sort everything (but weeks not months).