Probate never completed

Brynismydog wrote: »

Hi Approx 14 years ago my Nan died. She had 5 children and was sole home owner. 2 off her children were still living with her when she died, they were adults at this stage. To cut a long story short the probate was kicked off , no will, but never completed for what ever reason so the house was never divided up. May be some reluctance by the 2 adults living in the property rent free and mortgage free. Recently one of these adults has died and the other has had to be taken into care so we now have 2 lots of probate to be sorted. There are now only 3 surviving children of my nan and basically it has fell to myself and sister to mop this mess up who are the grandchildren.
The first thing we are going to have to do is sort out the death affairs of my nan which also includes the property that was also never sorted and is leasehold which is running down.
Any advice please ?

The nearest relative to the deceased needs to apply for letters of administration. How long is the leasehold? What other assets did your nan have such as bank accounts or other assets?

What do you mean by a probate number? Have you applied for letters of administration?

A house with 17 years left on the lease is hardly worthless, although it may be difficult to value. The important thing is that when your Nan died the lease had 31 years left and the house would be valued much higher. At that point a lease extension would have been more viable and cheaper than now. The two children living in the house have essentially run the estate into the ground, and if they hadn't died/ been taken into care they would still be living there rent-free happy-as Larry thanks to their selfish inaction in sorting out a basic duty to the deceased.

Under the intestacy rules the house should have been split 5 ways between her children (assuming husband had died) but 2 took the lot to the detriment of the others. They should have been paying one-fifth of the market rent of the house each month to the other 3 siblings as it was their house too, and the other 3 should have made sure they did. As it stands the 3 are £15-30,000 out of pocket each.

Any future distribution should be split between the non-resident 3 or their descendants.

konark wrote: »

A house with 17 years left on the lease is hardly worthless, although it may be difficult to value. The important thing is that when your Nan died the lease had 31 years left and the house would be valued much higher. At that point a lease extension would have been more viable and cheaper than now. The two children living in the house have essentially run the estate into the ground, and if they hadn't died/ been taken into care they would still be living there rent-free happy-as Larry thanks to their selfish inaction in sorting out a basic duty to the deceased.

Under the intestacy rules the house should have been split 5 ways between her children (assuming husband had died) but 2 took the lot to the detriment of the others. They should have been paying one-fifth of the market rent of the house each month to the other 3 siblings as it was their house too, and the other 3 should have made sure they did. As it stands the 3 are £15-30,000 out of pocket each.

Any future distribution should be split between the non-resident 3 or their descendants.

The only way I can see of obtaining something out of this mess, is either to rent the place out till the lease runs out, or get the freeholder to buy our the remaining lease, although if the place needs a lot of work doing to it to bring into good repair then I don't think either of these options are in play.

As it stands the lease cannot be extended until probate is completed and the new owners have owned it for 2 years, so the lease will then be under 15 years and the cost of doing so Is going to be prohibitivey expensive. If the place is in poor order then any sale price could wipe out any potencial profits , which would mean you have gone through all the hassle of administering an estate that may turn out to be insolvent.

If it was me the risks outweigh any potencial gain (that needs to be split several ways) , and I would not lumber myself with being an administrator,