Siblings live at home, what happens to inheritance.

[BluesandClues]

This is in no way anything that is happening currently, and I’m just looking for general advice on the most likely outcome.

My mother owns a house, and my two brothers live at home. They’ve never moved out nor do I think they ever will, it’s that kind of set up. My sister has told me that there’s no will, that when she told us that she’d been to the solicitor to update her very old one (now about thirty years old) she had lied to us. There’s a whole host of things that could be said about my family,

What tends to happen when there’s a house involved that potential inheritors live in? In my head I kind of wrote it all off, my sister however has said we both could end up with a logistical expensive nightmare after the fact.

If you have no contact she may not leave anything to you

"Otherwise you all may get nothing if the house needs to be sold for her care ."

The house will be disregarded for the purpose of calculating care fees if there is a family member over the age of 60 still living there when/if the mother goes in to care.

Nobody is talking about kicking the brothers out of the house if the mother goes in to care. This is about what happens after the mother passes away.

If you do t speak to your DM, what makes you think you’ll be in her will?

Well, exactly!

Because there may not be a will at all! So then, if intestate, the op does inherit.

If there is a valid will, it depends what it says.
Does it leave ‘ my house’? Or ‘ my estate’?
If ‘estate’, then the house must be sold to produce the cash to fulfil the bequests.
If ‘ house’ , there will be endless bother, either leaving the brothers in it without the money to maintain it, or forcing a sale, leaving them to find a new home.

What if the will isn’t found until years later?

That's when it all gets totally messy.

If no will can be found initially and the administrators then just distribute the estate according to the Intestacy Rules - the administrators are going to be personally liable for paying the real beneficiaries.

There are certain steps that the administrators can take to mitigate this risk so that they are no longer personally liable.

However, even if they do this, then that doesn't protect any beneficiaries who have incorrectly received any inheritance.

So, even if a person innocently received money from an estate, believing that there was no will, and it turned out that there was a will and they weren't due to inherit (either at all or as much as they did receive) then they would still be liable to repay any of that money. Even if they had already spent all of it.

I meant in the case of my Mother passing away, not prior to that.

If I’m honest, it would be an utter relief if I wasn’t.