Title deed with unknown name

roboyj

Hi all,

A little off topic but here goes:

My Grandmother, in her will, left a house to my father and uncle on the proviso that their step dad could remain there until the end of his days. she passed away in the early 90's and her husband passed away 5-6 years ago. since then the house has been empty but maintained and now they have both decided they have no interest in the property and would like to sell it.

They had thought that the title deeds had been lost, however through a lot of phone calls and emails they have been tracked down to a solicitors that absorbed the company my Grandmother's solicitor worked for before he retired back in the 80's.

By a stroke of utter luck, they still had the deeds to the property filed but on them is my fathers name, my uncles name and the name of who we think was a friend of my grandmothers. No one in the family knows this person and to add to the trouble this person has also sadly passed away. This person is not named in my grand mothers will either.

The solicitors holding the deeds will not release the document until they have seen a copy of a death certificate and we have no way of contacting the children of this person to get the original because no one knows this third party. We have tried to contact the family and even gone to the address of the named person to make inquiries but that house has been sold on twice so the current owners have no form of contact either.

My questions are:
Are you even able to apply for a copy of a death certificate for someone you don't know?

if we manage to get hold of the third party's family can they claim right to the property despite it being maintained with electricity and council tax being covered by my dad and uncle?

I understand that this is a bit of a weird situation however any help is appreciated!

AnnieO1234

Yes anyone can apply for a death certificate.

However you need to go through all paperwork both of your grandmothers and the ones from the solicitor.

How was the property held? Joint tenants or tenants in common? You need to find out when the other person died, what the circumstances were surrounding their will etc. It sounds very strange. Xxx

cte1111

Yes you can apply for a death certificate for someone you don't know. Was this person perhaps an executor for your relative? Here's the official guidance on death certificates:

https://www.gov.uk/order-copy-birth-death-marriage-certificate

AdrianC

...and you can search to see if they left a will, and get a copy of it if they did.
https://www.gov.uk/search-will-probate

roboyj

AnnieO1234 wrote: »

Yes anyone can apply for a death certificate.

However you need to go through all paperwork both of your grandmothers and the ones from the solicitor.

How was the property held? Joint tenants or tenants in common? You need to find out when the other person died, what the circumstances were surrounding their will etc. It sounds very strange. Xxx

Thank you for the speedy reply!

We know this person passed away in 2003, so before my dad's step father. As far as I know the property was only held in my Grandmother's name.

As far as the other persons will is concerned I haven't got the slightest idea...

cte1111 wrote: »

Yes you can apply for a death certificate for someone you don't know. Was this person perhaps an executor for your relative? Here's the official guidance on death certificates:

Thank you for sharing the link. I have taken a look at the site as I said above we think that they passed away in 2003 but I cannot find an obituary to confirm and my impression is that you would need this information?

xylophone

By a stroke of utter luck, they still had the deeds to the property filed but on them is my fathers name, my uncles name and the name of who we think was a friend of my grandmothers.

You say that your grandmother was the sole owner of the property and that in her will she left the house to her two sons with a life interest to their stepfather.

Who was the executor of your grandmother's estate? Presumably it was he who transferred the property into the names of your father and uncle - X ( the person who died in 2003) was not named in your grandmother's will so could he have already been on the deeds?


Is is there some indication that your grandmother originally owned the property as a tenant-in-common with X? If so, she could only bequeath her interest under the terms of her will.

If she did only own part of the property then the heirs of X will have some interest in it.

You know the full name of X and his former address and when he died - it should be possible to trace the death certificate and also any probate record (see above).

Your father and uncle will either have to do the research themselves or pay a solicitor to do it.

It seems to me that the house cannot be sold by the brothers if they cannot demonstrate that they have good title.

If your grandmother owned the property as joint tenants with X then she could not leave it in her will - it would have passed to X by survivorship on the death of your grandmother.

This really does need to be clarified.

silvercar

By a stroke of utter luck, they still had the deeds to the property filed but on them is my fathers name, my uncles name and the name of who we think was a friend of my grandmothers.

Sounds like your grandmother's will was not acted on correctly, that is if she did own the property in total prior to her death.

Are the deeds registered with Land Registry? If not then these deeds you have unearthed are the only evidence. In which case it was an unlucky find as you now have the problem to sort out. Without them, you could have probably registered the property with evidence from the will..

xylophone

Are the deeds registered with Land Registry?

The OP says that his grandmother died in the nineties - the property passed to the brothers by gift (the bequest) so if before 1998, there would have been no compulsion to register?

I wonder is the executor of the grandmother's estate still around?

One wonders how grandmother came to own the house - could it originally have been owned by the brothers' own father and X?

Did X give/sell his share to the brothers' father but the transaction wasn't recorded?

TeaLeaf

The quickest way to order a death certificate from the GRO is to have their index number. These indexes are available in a variety of places online and physicaly - see https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/423368/PublicHoldersofGROIndexesApril15.pdf

However, 2003 is very late and these recent deaths may not on the idex most readily available to you. If you can't get there, contact the places listed as holding them and see if they are willing to look up the information for you. Deaths are registered quarterly, so ask them to look for the Jan-Mar quarter of 2004 as well, as it's done by the date the death was registered, not when the person died. If someone died on 31st December 2003, their death will probably not have been registered until January 2004.

You may be able to order a death certifcate without the index number, but it's a slower and more expensive process, and you may need to provide more detailed information because it is a recent event. Do you know where they lived last? Could you place an ad in the local newspaper asking for people who knew X to contact you? If you need to find an obituary, try contacting the local studies library of the place where you think they lived before they died. They may have the newspapers on microfilm. If it's local to you, I recommend going yourself. It might be a pain, but it's probably better to spend a day getting all the information you need now to get this cleared up as quickly as possible.

silvercar

From the opposite point of view, if the deeds aren't registered with Land Registry and the paper deeds "disappeared", would grandmother's will and the fact the property has been occupied for X years with no dispute be enough to prove title?

antrobus

roboyj wrote: »

...Thank you for sharing the link. I have taken a look at the site as I said above we think that they passed away in 2003 but I cannot find an obituary to confirm and my impression is that you would need this information?

If your know the person's name and the year of death, you could always search the probate registry for them. If they're on it, that will give you the date of death.

https://www.gov.uk/search-will-probate