URGENT selling with restrictions on property

honeybee139

I urgently need some help quickly.
We are selling my partners mums house as probate sale, we’ve part ex’d His flat and purchasing a new build.
We exchanged contracts on all chains yesterday.
Today we’ve found out there is a Land Registry restriction on the property .
There is no debt or creditor issue and no money is owed. The property was put in a trust as part of the Universal Wealth Preservation to protect her assets for her beneficiaries . The company is now in liquidation.
Our solicitor is finding is difficult to remove the restriction.

Has anyone experienced this? Now that we’ve exchanged what is the risk or what can we do to legally support our buyers if removing this restriction takes more than 5 days?
Please help, I’ve googled for hours and can’t find this situation anywhere.

HouseBuyer77

A brief bit of google brings up this: https://www.step.org/policies/universal-wealth-preservation

Key quote:

Contact the Land Registry to ascertain in whose name your property is registered. Call the Land Registry on 0300 006 0411. We understand that the Land Registry is aware of the issues with Universal. If applying to remove Universal Trustee Ltd or Mr and Mrs Long as Trustees, the Land Registry will require a copy of the original Trust Deed.

Though from this BBC article: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-suffolk-45829270

sounds as if Universal Wealth Preservation might actually own the property.

Given this is the subject of a criminal investigation I would hope things can be resolved favourably to you (i.e. can sell house and get the money) however it may not be quick.

What exactly in the make-up of the chain? You say your partner has part-exchanged a flat and is buying a new house? Is the house in question actually part of that chain or were you anticipating the money from it would help finance it?

AnotherJoe

honeybee139 wrote: »

I urgently need some help quickly.
We are selling my partners mums house as probate sale, we’ve part ex’d His flat and purchasing a new build.
We exchanged contracts on all chains yesterday.
Today we’ve found out there is a Land Registry restriction on the property .
There is no debt or creditor issue and no money is owed. The property was put in a trust as part of the Universal Wealth Preservation to protect her assets for her beneficiaries . The company is now in liquidation.
Our solicitor is finding is difficult to remove the restriction.

Has anyone experienced this? Now that we’ve exchanged what is the risk or what can we do to legally support our buyers if removing this restriction takes more than 5 days?
Please help, I’ve googled for hours and can’t find this situation anywhere.

5 days? It could easily take 5 months. Did your googling discover the five year old thread in here about this bunch of chancers? There are some companies mentioned in recent posts who apparently, if the posts are to be believed, may be able to remove the restriction.


Your solicitor will be in trouble as well, for exchanging without discovering this issue before taking that irrevocable step. This is going to get messy and expensive and if i was your buyers I'd be taking legal action . You may need legal advice from a new solicitor because how can you complete on your purchase (unless the money from the house sale isn't needed?) and how can you trust your existing incompetent one ?



Good luck.

honeybee139

Please be kind, this is my first time here and a very distressing situation .
The property is register in mother in laws name but has Universal Weatlh as trusties.
We went through probate fine and the solicitors did not advise us to change the trusties, they said it was now fine to sell the property.

I’m assuming our buyer in his solicitors searches would have found out about the restriction on the property so that it can’t be sold before death and probate etc. They never mentioned it before exchange. I’ve researched that most buyers will not go to exchange with a restriction on a land register. Had they told us we could have started this process months ago.

The sale of this house is funding our on going purchase so we have a meeting with our solicitor about it tomorrow but today are reading up on this situation to find out what people have done to get through this.

Thankfully she did not invest any money with them. The paperwork clearly says the trustees are not allowed to benefit from the sale of the property or from any assets.

I’ve read that people have managed to remove the trustees successfully but I don’t know how long it takes.

Also if my googling had come up with the 5 year old thread I would have mentioned it. I’m not here to waste people’s time I’m here because no matter what I read I can’t find anyone in this situation to advise on what happened.

G_M

It is your solicitors who should have realised they (ie you) were not in a position to sell, and hence should not have allowed you to Exchange.

honeybee139

So now what do we do?

Keep_pedalling

honeybee139 wrote: »

So now what do we do?

You need legal advice on what to do. You have been let down by a combination of a scum bag care fee dodging company, your partners mothers failure to inform her son what she had done and your solicitors negligence in not picking this up earlier.

As has already been said this could take months to fix and the only way I can see to avoid the collapse of the chain is a bridging loan until you get the dodgy trustees removed and the trust wound up.

honeybee139

Does the buyers solicitor have any responsibility for allowing the exchange to happen knowing there was this restriction and not questioning it?
Would our solicitor have known about it? We didn’t even know about it.
I’m gutted the probate solicitors didn’t help us more as they dealt with universe trust as part of the probate. If they had advised us to deal with this situation we pull have had it sorted out a long time ago

steampowered

I am afraid that, as at today, it sounds like the property cannot be sold without the signature of the trustees. You are not going to get their signature now that Universal Wealth Preservation is in liquidation and their director in prison.

There is unlikely to be anything that the buyer or the buyer's solicitors can do about this.

It sounds like you need to urgently have an application made to the Land Registry to remove Universal Wealth Preservation as trustees.

You are probably using a standard conveyancer who won't have done this before.

Getting the restriction off might take them months or they might not be able to get the restriction off at all.

It would be a good idea to approach a specialist lawyer to help you with this. For example a google search reveals that this firm https://www.barkergotelee.co.uk/universal-wealth-preservation-trusts/ appears to have specific experience of helping Universal Wealth Preservation clients. They might be able to get Universal Wealth Preservation removed more quickly and reliably than your current conveyancer can.

You will have to pay for their help but that will be much cheaper than dealing with a legal claim.

As of right now, it sounds like the estate is not able to complete the sale. This means that the estate soon be in breach of contract. The worst case scenario is that the estate forfeits its deposit and gets sued by the seller for losses.

AnotherJoe

OP, read this and then contact a STEP solicitor


https://www.step.org/policies/universal-wealth-preservation

Comms69

honeybee139 wrote: »

Does the buyers solicitor have any responsibility for allowing the exchange to happen knowing there was this restriction and not questioning it?
Would our solicitor have known about it? We didn’t even know about it.
I’m gutted the probate solicitors didn’t help us more as they dealt with universe trust as part of the probate. If they had advised us to deal with this situation we pull have had it sorted out a long time ago

It's not clear if the buyers solicitor would be liable, but you are.


I'd expect this to cost a very significant amount and you should immediately contact your solicitor, with a view to reaching a settlement.


(I'd expect 5 figures)