How do I find out the solicitor my mum made her will with?

teabag29

I wont go into detail it's a long horrible story but i'm a benificery to my mothers will along with my 5 siblings. My brother is the executor. I haven't spoken to them since they stopped me seeing my mother 6 months before she died and didn't tell me of her death until a month after, once the funeral was over in the cruelest possible way which they deemed funny.

I have moved counties to escape their abuse and recently been diagnosed with a serious life long health condition that is seeing me decline quicker than i could've imagined. Stress makes this condition worse which is the main reason i moved away from it all.

Now suddenly 3 months after her death My brother has decided 2 plague me with drunken calls saying he cant hold off the will any longer (my mothers house is to be sold and split between her 6 children) and that the rest of them have all decided to rent it to my homeless sister instead but the solicitor says for this to happen we must all agree. My brother basically said to me either he does it above board (whereby I put it in writing that I agree to this) or he does it his way and make out I agreed to it or that he cant find me. He refuses to give me the name or number of the solicitor firm mum used for her will and there are so many solicitors in the city I havent a clue how to try and find it.

It will be a long time before the will reaches probate as they only opened it a few days ago but we all knew what was in it anyway, they have been holding off and I suspect the reasoning being is that they were spending mums savings. He mentioned he has to explain where mums savings went and he doesnt know what to tell him (my brother was drunk and kept slipping up telling me things he probably otherwise wouldn't have done).

Between the 5 of them (4 being alcoholics) they have it in their head (and this is not a joke they really believe this)....that my sister will be able to rent it for life, claiming housing benefit off the government which will be paid to my brother but split between the 6 of us each month and therefore they can have their cake and eat it, on top of that i'm expected to keep quiet about this arrangement so as not to interfere with my disability benefits im now on and as a token of gratitude they will pay me cash in hand each month my split of the housing benefit...... I kid you not this is what they've come up with and expect me to agree to, oh and to forget about the years of abuse i suffered and the fact they denied me the chance to say goodbye to my mother. Apparently if we all agree to renting then the will doesn't have to go ahead until we all decide to sell BUT he wants a contract drawn up stopping us being able to change our minds..... they obviously think im a sandwich short of a picnic.

Now I have asked over and over for the solicitor details so that I can let my views be known and leave contact details for any part of the will i receive (as for my own safety i dont want my family having my address or new number) but my brother gets angry when i ask this and refuses me the details and said if i dont play ball he will tell the solicitor to just find me as he cant (he knows my old number, i still have this phone but he is basically saying he will tell the solicitor he cant get into contact with me any how).

how do I go about finding mums solicitor?

BOBS

https://www.gov.uk/find-persons-will

some information here.
Do you know what the executors are ? they would be able to tell you

LilElvis

BOBS wrote: »

https://www.gov.uk/find-persons-will

some information here.
Do you know what the executors are ? they would be able to tell you

The OP says that the brother is the executor, hence the fact that she can't access the will.

Out,_Vile_Jelly

Sorry to hear about this traumatic situation. What are your priorities:

1 avoiding all contact with your siblings
2 obtaining a rightful share of your inheritance
3 preventing their housing benefit scam

1 Block your brother's number on your phone. Log all attempts at contact and detail any abusive threats,
2 This will require legal advice and would therefore be expensive- your solicitor would argue with their solicitor(s) so there would be no direct contact.
3 Report them to the benefit fraud hotline, and also HMRC.

belisha-beacon

You can apply to have an executor removed if you don't feel they're doing the job correctly. Information here, which also shows that you can apply through the courts to have a copy of the will: http://www.lawpack.co.uk/probate/articles/article7435.asp

Caz3121

I understood there was some sort of matching scheme re wills and benefits
The fact that your sister has been left a share in a property will get known
If she decides to give her share away to claim benefits then that will be classed as deprivation of capital so any means tested benefits would not be payable if her share is over £16k
If it ends up being registered with her name included she will be unable to claim housing benefit for renting from herself.
Likewise if you are receiving means tested benefits (not PIP/DLA) they would be affected by owning a share in property even if you decided to give your share away
Maybe you state that you do not want to be complicit to any fraud so will happily sell them your share and they can go off and do what they like and take whatever happens to them

niallmitch

She is unlikely to get housing benefit in the situation you describe so that would spoil that part of the plan.

BigAunty

Pop over to the benefit board to get a full picture on the actual likelihood of your sister getting benefits and the impact of the property ownership on your means tested benefits.

Remember that landlords are responsible for the maintenance of their properties so you will all have to pitch in to pay towards the next boiler, new roof, replacement windows over time and all the usual electrical, gas and plumbing issues in the property.

It is possible for a tenant to receive housing benefit if they are closely related to their landlord but housing benefit is not paid to homeowners. I also believe there is a 5 year ban on a tenant claiming housing benefit for a property they previously owned.

On the benefits forum, we often see benefit claimants want to give away their capital to their friends and family, some deliberately, some unaware, that the DWP and local council do not like this practice. We genuinely see people fed up with windfalls like an inheritance of property or money because they have to spend it on their rent instead of qualifying for HB...

The issue when people give away their assets is called 'deprivation of capital'. If your sister is a part owner and sells her share for less than market value or transfers it for free to others, the DWP/local council may treat her like she still has the money, known as 'notional capital', so she won't get council tax discount or HB. Deprivation of capital is when a benefit claimant gives away their capital (property, savings, investments) in order to qualify for benefits. It's a really complex area but the gist of it that if your siblings are scheming to turn her from an owner into a tenant and hide her share of the capital, then it's not going to work.

Tenants (not owners) can claim housing benefit if they are closely related to their landlords as long as they don't live in the same property as their landlords and it isn't seeen as a 'contrived tenancy', something deliberately set up to exploit the housing benefit system, such as not charging rent when they are in employment but charging it when they get benefits. It is also expected to be a commercially run tenancy. Look up the term 'contrived tenancy' to understand what a local council expects to see from a tenancy operated between relatives. Did your sister live in the property before she inherited it?

Local Housing Allowance (HB in the private) sector is capped. To understand the maximum LHA that your sister would qualify for as a tenant (not as an owner, HB is not for an owner), check the local council website. Assuming she is 35 and over, single and without dependents or severe disability requiring an overnight carer, she would qualify for the 1 bedroom rate, according to her needs, regardless of the size of the property. Between 5 or 6 of you, and minus income tax on the rental and repairs, I bet this doesn't go far.

BigAunty

Pop over to the property board to see if you are able to put some kind of notification against the deeds at the Land Registry that could stop it being sold without your knowledge. Perhaps there's a way to register an interest in the property. I am not familiar with that side of things but they may.

Also, you are probably aware that owning capital, including a property that you don't live in and that is rented out, affects means tested benefits like council tax, housing benefit and income related benefits like income based ESA and similar.

Will this affect you? Will this affect your siblings, who by the sounds of it, may not be in employment if they are alcoholics (3 out of my 4 family members who are alcoholics have not been in regular employment).

At the moment, people can qualify for tax credits despite being a landlord if their income is low enough as capital is ignored. In the move to the Universal Credit system which is supposed to replace tax credits, this is not possible.

Are any of your siblings in receipt of things like Working Tax or Child Tax Credits because once UC comes in (if it ever comes in at all), then they are in for a shock. Like means tested benefits do now (for example, Income support, Housing Benefit, council tax benefit and Income based JSA for example), equity in the property will start to affect their entitlement. Equity above 6k will start to reduce their entitlement to UC which replaces some of the benefits I've outlined, while equity in the property above 16k will rule out UC completely.

To understand the impact of the property inheritence on you (and perhaps give your siblings a wake up call) you can model the scenario on the Turn2us online benefit calculator, producing a 'before' inheritence scenation and an 'after'. You could could also find information on the higher conditionality that comes in with UC.

Morglin

teabag29 wrote: »

I wont go into detail it's a long horrible story but i'm a benificery to my mothers will along with my 5 siblings. My brother is the executor. I haven't spoken to them since they stopped me seeing my mother 6 months before she died and didn't tell me of her death until a month after, once the funeral was over in the cruelest possible way which they deemed funny.

I have moved counties to escape their abuse and recently been diagnosed with a serious life long health condition that is seeing me decline quicker than i could've imagined. Stress makes this condition worse which is the main reason i moved away from it all.

Now suddenly 3 months after her death My brother has decided 2 plague me with drunken calls saying he cant hold off the will any longer (my mothers house is to be sold and split between her 6 children) and that the rest of them have all decided to rent it to my homeless sister instead but the solicitor says for this to happen we must all agree. My brother basically said to me either he does it above board (whereby I put it in writing that I agree to this) or he does it his way and make out I agreed to it or that he cant find me. He refuses to give me the name or number of the solicitor firm mum used for her will and there are so many solicitors in the city I havent a clue how to try and find it.

It will be a long time before the will reaches probate as they only opened it a few days ago but we all knew what was in it anyway, they have been holding off and I suspect the reasoning being is that they were spending mums savings. He mentioned he has to explain where mums savings went and he doesnt know what to tell him (my brother was drunk and kept slipping up telling me things he probably otherwise wouldn't have done).

Between the 5 of them (4 being alcoholics) they have it in their head (and this is not a joke they really believe this)....that my sister will be able to rent it for life, claiming housing benefit off the government which will be paid to my brother but split between the 6 of us each month and therefore they can have their cake and eat it, on top of that i'm expected to keep quiet about this arrangement so as not to interfere with my disability benefits im now on and as a token of gratitude they will pay me cash in hand each month my split of the housing benefit...... I kid you not this is what they've come up with and expect me to agree to, oh and to forget about the years of abuse i suffered and the fact they denied me the chance to say goodbye to my mother. Apparently if we all agree to renting then the will doesn't have to go ahead until we all decide to sell BUT he wants a contract drawn up stopping us being able to change our minds..... they obviously think im a sandwich short of a picnic.

Now I have asked over and over for the solicitor details so that I can let my views be known and leave contact details for any part of the will i receive (as for my own safety i dont want my family having my address or new number) but my brother gets angry when i ask this and refuses me the details and said if i dont play ball he will tell the solicitor to just find me as he cant (he knows my old number, i still have this phone but he is basically saying he will tell the solicitor he cant get into contact with me any how).

how do I go about finding mums solicitor?

Contact a solicitor - they will write to the executor, getting full details of what you need to know.

Like n

euronorris

If the will states that everything is split equally between the children, unless agreed otherwise, then that is what will have to happen.


In reality though, how quickly a house sale would go through with an executor who doesn't really want to sell is another matter.


I would go down the other route and look at having the brother removed as executor.


First step is to find the solicitors dealing with it and speak to them. This information is likely stored on the Will itself, and you can therefore probably find it via the route suggested earlier.


You may find that, actually, your brother is not an executor, the solicitor is, but he is just being used as the main point of contact at present and has confused this with being an executor. People can often get confused by the terminology and think they are trustees/executors/beneficiaries etc, when that might not be the case. But again, a copy of the Will, will shed light on this for you. Given the history between you, I would suggest that you definitely need sight of the Will to confirm exactly what the situation is.