Division of assets under intestacy

[probateshitshow]

There are 3 children of a parent who died intestate. Two are adults and one is a minor.
There is no real value to the estate and it is only chattels to divide up. I understand that these need to be divided equally. Is this correct? The two adults granted probate will divide things up but one is very reluctant to allow anyone to have anything she deems sentimental but that’s pretty much everything as she was closet to their mother.
Items could be sold to collectors and the proceeds distributed equally but one administrator will not allow this to happen.
It’s all rather tricky and the minor beneficiary is likely to not get their share. They all have different dad’s and had very different relationships with their mother with no relationship at all with the youngest for reasons I won’t go into here.

What is the law on this please?

If the parent was unmarried and had no civil partnership then the children inherit the entire estate divided equally. It's all very clear online. Who are you in this scenario. Do the 3 children, particularly the minor, actually want anything.

I’m the parent of the minor child and worried they won’t get their share because the one who was closest to their mother deems them to have no right to anything and wants to keep everything untouched as it were as she is living in the mothers house.

Why is she living in the parents house, is it privately owned or council. If owned its part of the estate, if council has she got the legal right to stay there. Are you related to the mother by birth?

They can keep it untouched by paying a third of the value to each of the other two beneficiaries. They would need to get valuation of anything of monetary value.

I’m not related to the deceased. The daughter is living there because she lived there with her mother prior to going to university so she has returned home so to speak. The house has passed to her father by survivorship despite them being divorced and he has said she can continue to live there. Father lives elsewhere and is remarried. They owned the house as joint tenants and there was no financial settlement on
divorce.

As others have said, your child is entitled to one third of the estate. If the executors think your child has no right to anything, they need to think again. One of them deeming everything as sentimental also won't wash. However, given the estate has little value, the question you need to consider is whether it is worth pursuing this. If you want to do so, a letter from a solicitor reminding the executors of their duties may be enough to get them to do their job properly.

Thank you. What happens to things like the furniture, tv, expensive PC, and all the other day to day items most people have in their houses? One executor will say they aren’t bothered about any of that and it’s not of much value except the electrical. Even if nobody wants it except the eldest (because she’s living there and using it all) does it still have to be divided equally according to the value?

Does the father still own the house, it is 100% legally his now, as joint tenants she owned half which is part of her estate I think. I suggest getting legal advice. Yes everything she owned has to be divided but can they come to an informal arrangement.

Anything the deceased bought is part of the estate, it doesn't matter that they live there, unless they paid for it it's not theirs. First thing to do is find out where her share of the house went. You can get the contents valued but one person cannot just keep everything .

Unfortunately you will probably find that selling the goods will raise very little cash. When my mum went into a care home, we cleared her house so we could rent it out to help with the fees. We tried to sell some things privately but few things actually sold so we brought in a professional buyer. He offered a very low amount for a few things and refused to take anything else. Items that we thought might sell for a decent amount like collections of plates, new electrical goods, nice furniture etc, were not worth much. Most of the contents went to a charity shop ( and even they were fussy) or to the tip after we kept some sentimental mementos.

Either you don't bother,financially it's not worth much, or you try and come to an agreement between yourselves that items are distributed if people do want them, if that's not possible it's mediation then the probate court if the appointed person isn't fulfilling their executor duties and then youll never have to see them again. Does your daughter want anything of her mums. Legally she's entitled to a third.

No, if it was owned as joint tenants the house does not form part of her estate. The house would only be part of her estate if it was owned as tenants in common.

There’s some items that my child would like but as the house was only visited on the day of the funeral dc doesn’t know what’s there. There’s considerable collectibles worth around £10,000 to a collector if the executors can be bothered to sell them which is unlikely.

Surely the stuff has to be valued and if someone wants to keep it all they then have to pay the other 2 the value of their share.

I work in this field and house contents are rarely worth much unless there are significant antiques, art, cars etc. Most intestate estates I deal with require paying someone to take the stuff away. While all three beneficiaries are equally entitled, there may not be much gained by selling household goods for cash.

There definitely won’t be any disposing of anything. The Dd living there wants nothing touched.
I thought it all had to be divided equally according to value.
How can I make sure my child gets their third?

Maybe report her to the probate registry office for failing her duties as executor?

How old is your daughter. Do you want her to have the money or items, what is the other executor doing to resolve this.

Age 9. There are some items that would be nice to have. I just don’t want my child to reach 18 and tell me that I failed to make sure they got their equal share and how the eldest got the house and everything in it.
I’ll seek legal advice this next week.

It seems like the only practical way out of this is to negotiate a value for the estate (if you can find out what it actually consists of) and extract a payment of 1/3 from the other two.

Start with a high number and when they say it isn't worth that much, ask them to prove it. Whilst what others say is right, that chattels are often worth very little, sometimes there are small collectibles that don't look like much but are very desirable to the right collector.

The eldest got the house, was it from their dad? Are you in touch with him, is he reasonable. There are 2 executors who have to be in agreement, one can't just decide what to do. They need to step up here, legal advice is best, do you have it on your home insurance. Everything needs to be valued, items need to be fairly distributed, the eldest has to carry out their duties, good luck.

Did your daughter have a good relationship with her mum, are there sentimental items she'd like that mean something to her, was the mum your partner.

If you have an idea of what the contents are - especially the collection of collectible items you mention as having value - get a solicitor to write to the administrators of the estate asking for them to be valued and 1/3 of the cash value paid to your child. That said, general house contents like tvs etc are of minimal resale value. I did a seat in private client as a trainee solicitor and remember paying a house clearance company £500 to clear an entire house. Everything in it was perfectly nice, just not valuable. So the estate paid for it to be cleared, rather than getting and value for it.

Bear in mind she may well hide items or store them somewhere, the solicitor needs to write to both executors reminding them of their duties.

Interestingly the ex-husband has been valuing the estate with the daughter. They both have full access to the house with her living there and all the power work contained within. I don’t trust them at all.
I’ve contacted a solicitor today about all this but thank you to all who replied.