Land locked parcel of land

AdrianC

Woah, hold on. Let's go back a step.

The relative you hold LPA for - are they the one who died? If so, then your LPA ceased to carry any weight with their final breath. It's the executor's problem now.

If the executor has finished executing the estate, and the land has been distributed to the beneficiary - and that's whose affairs you have LPA over - then the executor is irrelevant. They've done their bit.

You certainly CAN make gifts under LPA - but only where it's in the donor's best interests to do so, and you are sure they would do so themselves if they were capable. In this instance, I think you can justify that.

davidmcn

AdrianC wrote: »

The relative you hold LPA for - are they the one who died?

No: "The sale of the house was managed by the executors of my relative's late wife (his stepdaughter & stepson). "

moneyistooshorttomention

Robin9 wrote: »

With no access it is worthless. Perhaps a token sum from an adjacent landowner but that would be swallowed up in legal costs.

Has it been fenced off ?

Perhaps it might help with figuring this out if we knew why that parcel of land wasnt sold with the house?

Keep_pedalling

You are in a bit of a bind there, because you are indeed duty bound to get the best price you can for the donor. As it is only of use to any of the adjacent land owners it is of limited value, but I am sure one of them would love to snap up some cheap land to extend their garden so it must have some value.

Davesnave

Keep_pedalling wrote: »

As it is only of use to any of the adjacent land owners it is of limited value, but I am sure one of them would love to snap up some cheap land to extend their garden so it must have some value.

It depends how many neighbours have potential access to this plot and what their gardens and houses are like, but circumstances might exist where the land has a reasonable value.

We retained the bottom 6m of our garden when we sold our last house, but this later allowed 4 neighbours to double the length of their gardens. They paid us £5k each and met all legal expenses, so it was definitely worth doing.

G_M

Maybe I'm being dumb (or skim-reading?!), but

* who originally owned twe 2 Titles (house X and extra land Y)? (call them A)
* who died? (A?)
* who were A's Executers? (B, C)?
* did B & C sell? To who? E?
* Who inherited the residue of the estate (ie property Y?) and now owns it?F?
* who do you have LPA for? F?
* has the Estate been wound up andd acccounts settled?

Confirmation and clarification would help.

As for the title, does it refer to any other documents (eg "A conveyance between M & N dated xx/xx/xxxxx? If so, there may be rights/obligations specified therein.

Is there anything else in the Title?

Do you know the history of this extra plot? It sounds like the owner of the property bought it at some point to extend his garden and there was thus no need for any access rights as it adjoined his garden.

When his house was sold (by the Executers?), since the extra plot was not included in the sale, the seller and his solicitor should at that point have included access rights as a condtion of the sale.

But that's just guessing.

Oxtonite_62

G_M wrote: »

Maybe I'm being dumb (or skim-reading?!), but

* who originally owned te 2 Tites (house X and extra land Y)? (call them A)
* who died? (A?)
* who were A's Executers? (B, C)?
* did B & C sell? To who? E?
* Who inherited the residue of the estate (ie property Y?) and now owns it?F?
* who do you have LPA for? F?
* has the Estate been wound up andd acccounts settled?

Confirmation and clarification would help.

As for the title, does it refer to any other documents (eg "A conveyance between M & N dated xx/xx/xxxxx? If so, there may be rights/obligations specified therein.

Is there anything else in the Title?

Do you know the history of this extra plot? It sounds like the owner of the property bought it at some point to extend his garden and there was thus no need for any access rights as it adjoined his garden.

When his house was sold (by the Executers?), since the extra plot was not included in the sale, the seller and his solicitor should at that point have included access rights as a condtion of the sale.

But that's just guessing.

Thanks for the reply G_M.

I'll try and summarise this as best I can but it is a very complicated situation:

My relative married his late wife and moved into her house but didn't pressure her to put the house into joint names (even though she was wasn't working and was in debt and was unable to pay mortgage). They bought the parcel of land in joint names. When she died her Will stated that he was to vacate the house within 2 years but was entitled to a sixth share on the sale of the property. In her Will, her stepdaughter and stepson were appointed executors of her estate . My relative contested the Will (long, costly court case) and the outcome was that he was allowed to remain in the house until his death or until he went into alternative permanent residence and was also to retain his sixth share of the property. The parcel of land was also put into his sole name.

My relative went into a nursing home a year ago and the executors sold the house in October 2017. The purchaser did not want to buy the parcel of land and went ahead with the house sale without the land.

I have an LPA in place for my relative and we are waiting for his share of the proceeds from the sale of the house.

My solicitor has issued a Probate Court summons for the executors to produce an Inventory & Estate accounts as 2 previous requests for this information was ignored.

With regard to the parcel of land, there isn't anything significant in the Title.

Thanks.

Oxtonite_62

Davesnave wrote: »

It depends how many neighbours have potential access to this plot and what their gardens and houses are like, but circumstances might exist where the land has a reasonable value.

We retained the bottom 6m of our garden when we sold our last house, but this later allowed 4 neighbours to double the length of their gardens. They paid us £5k each and met all legal expenses, so it was definitely worth doing.

That's interesting Davesnave, thanks for the info. There are two neighbours that would possibly be interested and they are approachable as they both supported my relative in his early stages of dementia.

Thanks.

Davesnave

Oxtonite_62 wrote: »

That's interesting Davesnave, thanks for the info. There are two neighbours that would possibly be interested and they are approachable as they both supported my relative in his early stages of dementia.
Thanks.

I'd stress that individual circumstances are very important in restricted situations like this. Ours just happened to be favourable. With different people, or less valuable properties, a sale of garden land with no building potential might not happen at all.

Our plot had pedestrian access, but those who might have benefited didn't want it, for reasons of security. They genuinely preferred a landlocked situation. As a result, we sold the remaining access land to the people who bought our house for the princely sum of £1.

This demonstrates what I mean by the situation being individual and unpredictable. We would never have thought owners of £400k properties would choose the inconvenience of landlocked gardens, especially in a low-crime area.

G_M

It seems to me, as a lay person, that the Executors (or their solicitors) would have had a duty when selling the property, to ensure access to the parcel of land was maintained in some way.

Without knowing the precise layout it's hard to advise how this could have been achieved, but it might have necessitated the buyers' consenting as a condition of purchase to the owner of the parcel of land having a ROW (probably on foot only) across their land. In perpetuity (ie a ROW forr subsequent owners too).

This should have been incorporated into the Titles of both the property and the parcel.

By failing to do this, your relative has suffered a (perhaps significant) loss of value to his land.

A legal claim could be made for whatever that loss is calculated to be (the difference in value of the parcel of land, with, Vs without, a right of access).

But you'd need proper legal advice to confirm I'm not misleading you!