Insuring deceased son's house

SevenOfNine

We lost our son on 31 January, no Will. He owns home with £106k mortgage which has been frozen.

We can find no trace of buildings insurance, no paperwork whatsoever. Mortgage provider (Tesco) say it was not with them.

Not on the list of DD/SO his bank gave us, but maybe like us he paid in one hit annually & switched companies regularly.

The house is up for sale now but I'm concerned about having no buildings insurance, & even if it does, having no idea who with.

Is the best course of action getting it insured, might this be difficult given that he's deceased & probate (letters of administration) has yet to be granted?

Investigate getting this done, or leave it? I'd rather be safe than sorry.

Robin9

What sad news.

Just insure the house and contents in the name of the Administrators of the Estate or your own names if you have to.

AnnieO1234

When my grandmother passed away in 2011, my father was able to extend a policy from is own insurer (iirc Direct Line) to her home for a month or so. Xxx

pmlindyloo

Sorry to hear of your loss.

Have you checked his bank statements/credit card statements for the last year or so and see if you can a payment to an Insurance Company? If you can find a name you can give them a call and they will check whether there is house cover insurance.

davidmcn

Assuming the property has been unoccupied for the last couple of months, any standard policy will be invalid anyway - you'll need to arrange specialist cover for an empty house in the name of the executors.

SevenOfNine

Thank you all.

Good point davidmcn - it's been empty since 7 Dec.

We've been so distraught haven't really thought about actually moving it forward before, too much other stuff to sort out. Will start making calls tomorrow.

Unoccupied property & insure in executors name. Thanks.

xylophone

We've been so distraught

Which is not surprising - deepest sympathy.

You might try your own insurers first to see what they can offer in these circumstances?

gingercordial

Sorry for your loss.

Once you've sorted out insuring it now, you should still try to find out who your son had his previous insurance with. If he paid in one lump sum it may be with an insurer which auto-renews unless you tell them to do otherwise, and getting them to reverse a charge would be hassle you don't need.

SevenOfNine

gingercordial wrote: »

Sorry for your loss.

Once you've sorted out insuring it now, you should still try to find out who your son had his previous insurance with. If he paid in one lump sum it may be with an insurer which auto-renews unless you tell them to do otherwise, and getting them to reverse a charge would be hassle you don't need.

They'll have a job, cards cancelled & a/c closed now. We did that quickly because we've had a problem identifying what payments might be taken by anyone we were unaware of (subscriptions, on-line gaming & stuff like that). Not to say there might not be things to pay for (& we're happy to do so), but hoped it might flush people out asking for their money.

All the utilities, mortgage, rates, BT etc have been very helpful. Didn't help that he changed to Santander not long ago, we're not sure if he was with Lloyds or Barclays before that.

I thought if you had a mortgage it was compulsory to have buildings insurance? I'm not surprised there's no trace of contents insurance but buildings!!!

This has been a truly crap task, in crap circumstances & so the wrong way round that we should involuntarily inherit from our own son. When we can get the energy up we'll look at Deed of Variation to pass the proceeds from house sale over to our grandsons (his nephews) - he'd want that for sure.

Thank you all for your condolences.

bjbyorkshire

Hello, you sure sound as if you have an unenviable task on your hands still.

As you know we had a similar scenario in that we also inherited our daughters house. She fortunately had left everything filed in apple pie order in her house and because my husbands name was also on the mortgage with her then everything moved forward with ease in our case. We have just sold the house after almost 4 years of being landlords. found out that this was not for us.

I do wish you well and hope that you are able to get the house and your son's affairs sorted soon. You are unable to grieve properly until all this is finalised.

Bjbyorkshire

TBagpuss

I'm sorry for your loss. AS others have said, it's likely that the existing insurance will be invalid anyway of the property is empty, so your best bet it to insure as an empty property. I believe the Hiscox offer empty property insurance but your solicitor or insurance broker will be able to advise.