Do sellers need to change title deeds before we can purchase?

[That70sHouse]

We are buying a house from an older gentleman who has gone into a care home. His wife died about 5 years ago. Our solicitors have said that both husband and wife are still named on the deeds and they owned the house as tenants in common. Therefore our solicitors are saying that the vendors solicitors need to apply to the land registry to have this changed, and for the husband to be the sole owner on the deeds, before we can exchange (and then contact land registry again post completion to change it to our names). However the other solicitor is saying that this can all be done in one go after completion when they contact the land registry, because the husband is still alive. We will be due to remortgage in October and our solicitors say that if we have a complex paperwork post completion that it may prevent us from remortgaging. Current estimate for the title deeds to be changed from husband and wife to just husband are 12 weeks 😒 who is right?

Yes, if the 50% is left to the surviving partner this makes sense. But OP doesn't know that is the case here

@EauNeu the Land Registry won’t look at who owns the 50% beneficial interest when registering the transfer to a new owner.

Solicitors get struck off for doing things like not distributing in accordance with a will, so we tend to trust each other on things like this.

Interesting. So the land registry and the buyer are trusting the sellers solicitor to make sure all is above board.

Thank you for explaining.