Why would our neighbours solicitor need our contact number?

[user1471867483]

My mum owns the freehold of the property next door. She's 82 and has lived in our freehold house for 61 years. The leaseholders next door are moving and they slapped this lpe1 form in our hands to fill in with no solicitor cover letter, nothing. We haven't a clue what to do! I'm currently unemployed and mum being an OAP is on her old age pension. We cannot afford any legal fees. Then they're asking us if it's ok they give mum's contact details to their solicitor and I said of course not, as it's confidential! Why do they want to give out mums number and what can we do in this situation? I read it's not compulsory to fill in the lpe1 form anyway.

Tell them your DM will answer appropriate questions for a leasehold house. It's ages since I've needed to as I no longer fee-earn but from memory it should be more like 10 questions.

Re the consent to work, how bothered is your DM? Would it be easiest for her to sign a retrospective consent?

She does need to check her freeholder responsibilities in the lease. 1920s house leases typically don't have so many as modern house leases. Plus both parties often get into their own habits with insurance, maintenance etc so she needn't panic about being sued for not carrying out her responsibilities. It's not the same as for flats.

Awww...not nice 😢

Exactly.

Does your mum have any legal cover on her household insurance. I’d want to ensure she’s meeting all legal obligations as owner of the freehold and seeking legal advice. If your mum is elderly and at some point in the future you will need to sell the property it would help you as well to understand the requirements. It is important to be aware and avoid longer term issues.

are you the op who has been asking the neighbours for months to sort out the damage that their building work caused to you property ? I wouldn’t be in a rush to sort out any paperwork

You don't have to do this ASAP for their timings but typically a leaseholder would have a standard set of questions to answer and would be doing so on the sale of the lease.
If your mum owns the lease then she can't just say I don't have the time/capacity/money/copy of lease to answer the questions. She can potentially charge a fee but she will need to sort this out and answer the questions. The main thing is to get a copy of the lease, establish if you can charge a fee and take it from there.

You need to get a grip, your mum owns the freehold, if she can't cope with the paperwork you will have to. Or you will have to get a solicitor to help. You might want to discuss getting some income from the property when the leasehold is sold it seems crazy your mum has been getting no income from it for 60 years, if that is what you are saying. Or arrange to sell the freehold to someone who can deal with it and your mum can have whatever money that raises, depending where you are it may be a significant amount or not! You will still need a solicitor.

Wouldn’t it just be easier to fill in the form? Not sure why you’re instructing your mum to be so obstructive? She does own the freehold for next door, so ignoring everything and purposely taking a long time seems a bit silly. 🤷🏻‍♀️

I’m afraid your mother has a responsibility here even if she doesn’t recognise it. Being a freeholder she should have been organising landlords building insurance all this time. Along with generally having a responsibility towards the property.

The info needed is standard for the sell of leasehold but if I was buying knowing the state of the freeholder I wouldn’t buy it

It feels a bit like you want the 'rights' of a freeholder i.e. you seem put out they haven't asked permission for building works but not the 'responsibilities' i.e you don't want to fill out the form or seek proper advice

Nonetheless, I agree you should probably speak to a solicitor in real life rather than relying on chatgpt and strangers on the internet

If you knew about it and didn’t do anything to contest it… that’s consenting to it.

Also your mums details as the freeholder of their house are absolutely NOT confidential… denying them the details is incredibly obstructive and makes you both massive dicks tbh. She’s the freeholder! That’s how it works!!

The sellers want to move if your mum has no idea and needs legal advice ask the NDN to cover the cost of having it reviewed and being helped to fill it in eg ask how many hours consultation should be needed and the total £ and ask the NDN to pay who ever you choose up front

Agree.
This is ridiculous op.
Owning a freehold and just being too lazy to get to grips with what it means is just embarrassing
Get some paid legal advice .

Perhaps the freehold should be sold to the leaseholders, to simplify things all round. Get legal advice on doing this.

I'm not clear from your replies if your DM owns the freehold of the land and also the house next door, or just the land itself and the neighbours (in the 1920s) built their own house on land they lease?

I expect the freehold was retained to maintain some control over what happens on the neighbouring property.
But that is pretty pointless if ops mum does nothing when they build something she doesn't like

I, and other leaseholders who were my neighbours, had a world of issues due to a freeholder who didn't have a clue about his legal responsibilities as a freeholder. All the while our properties going to rack and ruin. He learned quick enough when we took him to tribunals and won substantial costs. Don't wait til something like that happens. You can, as pp has said sell the freehold to the current or next leaseholder, or get someone to manage it. You need legal advice.

You cannot sit this out as not having money for legal fees and your mum being elderly. She has legal obligations as a freeholder which she’s not been undertaking.

I’d ask the neighbours if they would want to purchase the freehold, split the land title deeds of your mums house and the other land; and make the other property freehold. You’ll probably get them to pay the legal fees as it benefits them.

Why on earth should they pay?

Does your mum have legal cover on her house insurance? May be worth checking.

You could try speaking to Citizen's Advice - they may be able to help - at the very least they should be able to signpost you to some free legal advice centres.

‘We just went along with it’
so you did know, didn’t object, so it’s effectively consent of sorts. If your mother owns next door’s freehold but can’t be arsed to get her head around what this means by way of her legal or other obligations - and personally, I think she has a moral obligation to understand what she should be doing just to make people’s lives a little bit easier - then she should seek away of selling the freehold to the leaseholder.

have you even attempted to fill in this form? Instead, you’ve just opting to ignore it.

Sitting there and claiming ignorance of the law and that she is an OAP (there are plenty of OAPs of perfectly sound mind and capacity so it’s no excuse) is pathetic and unhelpful and unneighbourly

Yeah she needs to stump up for actual paid professional advice you can't just ignore it and be like but she's old 😬

Free conveyancing advice is worth precisely as much as you pay for it, i.e. nothing - not least because it won't be covered for insurance. Your parents must have had a copy of the lease when they bought the property, or when the lease was created, but it's easy enough to get a copy from the Land Registry. You really must get legal advice on this, including the option of selling the freehold.