Andrew, Sarah & a Royal Lodge question

[MoondustandFairies]

Following some of the news stories about Andrew relinquishing Titles & a more local news story saying that he & his ex wife will continue to live in the Royal Lodge makes me wonder how that can be funded. Can they be made to leave if they can't pay?

It has 7 - or 12? - bedrooms so I expect it requires a bit of mopping & dusting each week - so do A & S also employ staff to maintain the property.

Not sure how old they both are either, maybe close to retirement?? but how do they fund a lifestyle without being propped up by the RF. Which prob won't please William too.
Just my tuppence worth question wondering how non working ex Royals with no marketable skills will pay staff wages & buy groceries.

It seems he paid £1m for the lease initially, and then another £7.5m to pay for repairs & maintenance.

He has a legally valid lease with a peppercorn rent but is required to pay on-going maintenance. This was the deal arranged with the blessing of the late Queen to provide for her son during his lifetime.

No idea where he gets the money to pay the maintenance. A house like that must cost a fortune.

And it's not just the house. There's the gardens, the grounds, it has a chapel and various cottages

Yes I'm sure she was relying on a state pension. Poor woman.

Just googled the QM, estimates are she died with between £50 and £70 million. That's rich in my book. She was left money by her father and her husband

Lownie said that Andrew's lease was "cast iron".
Maybe KC's legal team are on it.

Why on earth Charles doesn't insist that Sarah moves out given she is not a member of the royal family anymore having been divorced for nearly 30 years. That might set the ball rolling

Charles is not the landlord though - the Crown Estate is, which is an independent company that manages the Crown property. Its profits go to HMT. Clearly, as a public body, it has to obey the law. So having entered into a lease with Andrew, they will have to act according to its terms. And generally if you rent a property the landlord can’t tell you who gets to live there with you (if they are not subletting).

That means Sarah pays no money towards it then is just squatting there

If shes there with the consent of the tenant, then no, she’s not squatting, whether she contributes financially to the property or not.

(If you - anyone - rents a property they are allowed to chose the people who lives there with them. In many cases that will be their dependent children, but obviously could be anyone - a parent, a sibling, a niece or nephew, a live-in staff member etc etc. That’s not a problem, and the person living there is doing nothing wrong, unless the terms of the particular lease is breached. It’s highly unlikely a large house would ever be leased on terms requiring sole occupancy, so Sarah is therefore presumably doing nothing wrong. Unpopular is not the same as wrong, of course).

I also don't believe they don't have staff i can't see them.running the hoover round or mopping floors also no nanny's? I don't think there is anything wrong with staff i would love staff 😀 but I don't think W&K could have their lives without staff.

How many times can you say staff 😂

They have a weird co dependent relationship probably because they know to much about each other, so i don't think she is squatting definitely there with permission

My squatting comment was tongue in cheek 😂

Oh sorry lost in translation 😀

The same comment - that wrong is not the same as unpopular - could be made about the Times coverage here, who are stoking the flames as hard as they can (as you would expect from the MSM). They report that “The Times obtained a copy of the leasehold agreement for Royal Lodge, revealing the terms under which the prince lives on the 30-room estate. It states that, while the prince paid £1 million for the lease plus at least £7.5 million for refurbishments completed in 2005, he has paid “one peppercorn (if demanded)” in rent per year, since 2003”.

This is a therefore not a standard “consumer” lease as you or I might enter into to rent a home, under which the landlord is responsible for maintenance of the property and you pay rent set at a market rate at regular, generally monthly intervals (generally these are called shorthold assured tenancies). This a bespoke long term lease under which Andrew paid a significant sum upfront to obtain the lease, and also had onerous refurbishment requirements. But this is also common. Generally in a lease of this nature the tenant also has to ensure that the property, when eventually handed back, is also in this same improved condition. So you have high costs at the start and end of the agreement, but no obligations to pay any regular rent for the interim period.

This is a perfectly normal (and perfectly legal) form of lease. A peppercorn rental is very well-known concept, and is neither shady nor does it mean Andrew’s done anything wrong under the lease that means he can be evicted.

So the lease story is legally a nothing burger - but no one cares about that now do they when there’s a story to be spun…

Oh I think they both know where bodies are buried.

Sorry, I just read the words you had written….!

Definitely!

No worries, I was just being daft. She wants to be there and he wants her there

Imagine being a member of staff and having to tend to that pompous, entitled buffoon’s needs? I bet they have to draw straws to work there!

Apparently she died with 8 million in debt. All that quaffing champagne etc…

Shudders

Your Google must be different to mine, because mine says 30 rooms but 7 bedrooms!

It is 30 rooms. 30 bedrooms would put it on a par with something like Chatsworth or Blenheim Palace which it clearly isn’t.

But why let accuracy get in the way of righteous indignation?!