Help please

emylou

Hi, I would like a little help please & will try to keep this as short as possible. Any comments/questions/suggestions welcome please. Thanks in advance!

My OH's dad died unexpectedly a few months ago. No Will has been found in his belongings and his solicitor does not know of one either. He was divorced and single with 3 children. He had 2 properties; 1 he lived in along with some family friends who rented a bedroom and another flat he let out through an agency.

My questions are; what happens to the mortgage on the property he was living in? I got told by a relative that the "mortgage" should be frozen but the tenants should continue to pay their rent into a separate account? (Why & what happens to this money?) What happens about my FIL's part of the mortgage- my OH is the next of Kin, should we be covering this?

Also, my OH has started driving his Dad's car which I assume was taxed in his Dad's name but my OH was insured on it, is this allowed?

Sorry if the questions are silly but I wouldn't know where to start if I was in my OH's shoes and he is bottling everything up and not talking to anyone so I am just trying to sort a few things out in my own head. He is obviously still in shock and although he has got a solicitor to start organising Probate I am worried what is happening with this mortgage/rent issue (there are other elements to this but I don't want to go into them all right now).
Thanks for reading.

Yorkshireman99

Next of kin has no real legal meaning. Nobody has any liability for the deceaseded's debts. The car insurance will have lapsed so it should not be driven. The mortgage is not frozen. Has anybody told the lender and his bank? Someone needs to apply for letters of administration so the estate can be dealt with. A child over 18 can do this. They can either administer the estate themselves or get a solicitor to do it. What is the value of the estate? If it is more than £425,000 then there will b IHT to pay and this needs to be done within six months so speed is important if penalties and interest are to be avoided.

Keep_pedalling

Not only will the car insurance have lapsed so will the tax so he needs to stop driving it until that is sorted. It also forms part of the estate so if he keeps it his siblings share of the rest of the estate needs to be adjusted to reflect that.

Your OH ( or one of his siblings) needs to apply for letters of administration, and the first thing they need to do is inform the mortgage company and his bank of the death which should result in the mortgage being frozen until the house is sold.

if the rented house was being managed by a letting agency then they should be able to continue collecting the rent on behalf of the estate. If he was collecting the rent himself then your OH needs to inform the tenants of the death and either take the task over or appoint an agent to do so. As it is likely that both properties will need to be sold, both sets of tenants should be given notice to quit ASAP.

Insurance for both properties also needs looking at.