Inheritance of a property query

[Worried8263839]

My aunt died some years ago and her husband inherited everything. He has recently passed away and left me and my brother 25% each of the property. His two children have the other 50%.

Has anyone been in a similar situation before? If so, do we all have equal responsibility for the sale of the property? It is all being dealt with by a solicitor but they have given me and my brother incredibly limited information at this stage. All we have been told is the sale could take quite long as the grant of probate needs to be issued first. We do not have any relationship with his two children (adult) so awkward to ask them.

You will not own your share of the property until the grant of probate has been issued then all 4 of you will need to decide what to do. One of you may wish to keep the property in which case they need to buy the other 3 out. Then if course there is the inheritance tax payment if due, can the estate afford to pay that without the property being sold.
The property should be insured at the moment by the executors and any bills for that and heat and light etc from now until the property passes to you will be born by the estate. The executors will have to maintain the property until it is passed to you 4 and then the responsibility is divided between the 4 of you until it is sold.

Just starting all this with my FIL's estate. Things take time.

That’s super helpful, thank you so much!

It depends who is named as executor

I think

If you haven't been told you're an executor, you're not likely to be? I mean, surely someone would've told you by now.

It seems more likely that his children would be executors.

Try not to fall out!
Any one person can make it very awkward for the others, if you are shared ownership. The preferable will would instruct the property to be sold and the cash be split… otherwise you all have joint responsibility for upkeep etc but if one person prevents sale it can become a burden on the others…

Who are the executors? They have full responsibility for the property and even though probate isn’t back, it can go up for sale. Generally, responsibility stays with the executors even after probate is back. This is because it’s not usually worth the hassle of changing ownership with the land registry, if it’s being sold.

As @Briningitallinsaid, you can put it on the market before you get probate but it can put people off as probate has been taking ages. The bit about not changing the title is fair too although if it took ages to sell them who is responsible for the upkeep and bills as the executors would need to pass this responsibility on to the new title holders as they may not agree to the estate paying the bills. I'll know more as our estate goes on though my husband is inheriting the house and is one of the executors.

That’s all very useful, thanks for the replies. We don’t know who the executor is, as someone said, I assume his children. We haven’t seen a copy of the will.

possibly a very stupid question, but why would a solicitor be involved? I thought the executor did that role as such?

It can be quite complicated dealing with everything. We’re using a solicitor to guide us through the process.

The solicitor may be the executor, you can ask them if they are the named executors and do they have your contact details, as a beneficiary they don't need to give you much information but it's good practice if they do share with you anything relevant. If they are executors then they will deal with the house, estate, bills, insurance, probate.

Well, it's a lot to deal with. I used to think I'd do it myself when the time comes, but now I'm not so sure.

As a pp has said it takes time to obtain probate. What you can do for a nominal fee is apply to be provided with a copy of probate and the will once it is granted. https://www.gov.uk/search-will-probate

I don’t think there shoild be any problem having a conversation with the solicitor who’s dealing with everything. Bear in mind that only direct descendants ie children and grandchildren inherit property (bricks and mortar) tax free. Nieces and nephews will be liable for IHT on their share of the proceeds above the tax free threshold. The solicitor should be able to tell you precisely. But for your uncle and aunt the tax fre allowance will be quite high. 750k iirc.

Sorry, that was really garbled. The tax free allowance when a husband and wife have died is 375k each. If a property is part of the estate this rises to 500k. But the extra 125k is only IHT free for direct descendents. But if the entire estate is 750k or less it should be IHT free for all beneficiaries. I think that's still quite garbled 🤦🏻‍♀️ it's a while since I was an executor.

Probate and being executor can be reasonably manageable, and it can be painfully complicated. The very fact that the house is to be split between the four of you immediately makes it tricky.

My mum left behind some difficult issues, and consequently all three of her executors (who weren't family members) all renounced the role. So I had to instruct solicitors to do it.

Thank you all for your replies, it’s really appreciated. Lots of points made that I wasn’t aware of/hadn’t thought of.

I'm wondering (as a non legal bod) re wording in the will.

The executor may have instructions to sell the house and you get 25% of the proceeds, rather than the house being left to 4 people 25% each. That would remove any arguments over what price to accept as it will clearly be the executors responsibility not the 4 of you.