Gifted Deposit - Require a Solicitor?

D2007

Hi, my situation is that I am about to buy a house for £200k. £100k will be from a mortgage, £50k my savings and the remaining 50k is gifted from my mother.

We are close to completion and the solicitor has now said that my mother needs her own solicitor to "gift" anything above £25k to represent her. This is the first I have heard of anything like this. I was expecting them to request a letter stating she had no interest in the property and did not expect any payment in return. This was my understanding from reading these threads in the past. I did query this with the bank and they said they were happy with the gift and never asked for anything else.

Anyone know if the solicitor is correct (legally) or if a letter stating no repayment in any form should be sufficient?

Really don't have the time to get all this done to get it completed before Christmas and also having another set of solicitor fees is the last thing I wanted.

Thanks for any information / advice on this.

RabbitMad

Get your mother to gift the money to you - once its in your bank account its your cash and you can do what you like with it - but if your mother were to die in the next 7 years there might be an inheritcance tax liability.

Don't see the sols issue personally

tyllwyd

My first feeling on reading this is that the solicitor wants to cover his own back by making sure that your mother has her own independent legal advice. Otherwise, it might be argued in the future that you put undue pressure on her to give you that money. So it is good practice by your solicitor to make sure that all parties have had advice. I wouldn't have expected it would cost a huge amount, she just needs to arrange to talk it through with a solicitor who can explain the implications to her of what she is doing. (I'm sure your mother understands it all, but there might be situations where an elderly confused person was persuded to sign away large amounts of money without understanding what was going on.)

Cannon_Fodder

The solicitor may be being over-cautious. But they are the ones you might try to go back to in X years when something unexpected has cropped up, to blame for the unexpected...

Mother needs to consider 'deprivation of assets' rules and tax, at the very least. A solicitor, or other financial professional may come up with other areas of concern.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/2515411

Is the plan still to live with Mother? Surprised a lender will allow a family member to make a substantial contribution and live in it, without being considered as part of the mortgage/ownership - they might struggle to repossess if the wrong paperwork is in place.

Perhaps, more importantly, Mother needs to get legal advice about her own "security of tenure" that she appears to be giving away.

D2007

RabbitMad - Don't think I could put the money in my account and then give it to the solicitor as I'd still need to show where the funds came from as it's a lot of money to turn up one day. I am already providing evidence of my funds showing it's been saved / in the account for more than 6 months.

Tyllwd & Cannon Fodder, I can understand what you are saying and therefore see the solicitors point, although why they couldn't just speak to my mother directly about it without having to find another solicitor firm is beyond me - even them charging for the "talk" would no doubt be far less than what a new firm is going to want. If I was putting pressure to get the money it's not like it wouldn't happen at another solicitors firm anyway. My mother isn't exactly old in elderly terms either, she's only 50 and I did say she could come in and see them.

Thanks all for your advice, I guess I best go and find a another solicitor to deal with this and hope they can get it done this week.

Cannon_Fodder

Another partner in the same firm might well satisfy their requirements...

tyllwyd

If you want to look on the internet, I think the term used is 'undue influence'. The solicitor might not want to talk to your mum, because he is working for you, and it is best for you to have this money as a gift - but from your mum's point of view, he might consider that he should advise her that she should not give the money away no strings attached. So there might be a conflict of interests.

LandyAndy

D2007 wrote: »

RabbitMad - Don't think I could put the money in my account and then give it to the solicitor as I'd still need to show where the funds came from as it's a lot of money to turn up one day. I am already providing evidence of my funds showing it's been saved / in the account for more than 6 months.

.

Well it's a bit late now you have told your solicitor what you are doing but I presume he didn't ask for details of where your £50k savings came from so why would he have asked why you had £100k?

Would have been much easier to do as RabbitMad said.

D2007

LandyAndy wrote: »

Well it's a bit late now you have told your solicitor what you are doing but I presume he didn't ask for details of where your £50k savings came from so why would he have asked why you had £100k?

Would have been much easier to do as RabbitMad said.

From what I recall from reading other posts, the Banks / Solicitors will only go so far in checking where the funds have come from, as in within reason. But within reason (on my Banks part at least) was to show them 3 months of bank statements to show the money was sitting in there. I'd presume the Solicitor will be doing the same, so they would want to show that it has had some history of being in my ownership. Probably for money laundering reasons.

But in future if this was to occur to me or family and friends, I will be suggesting they get the money in their banks months in advance and then look for a place.

You live and learn