Historical records of changes to date of birth

Knockmore73

Good afternoon folks, 
I am hoping you could help me with query i have over the historical ability for someone to change the date of birth on a joint mortgage account (and linked current account). 
In the mid 80's a friend of mine had a joint Nationwide mortgage with his sister to buy a house in the UK; and they owned the house together. There is seemingly no record of the mortgage application from then. over time, my friend's sister allowed her boyfriend to stay with her in her house.my friend's sister and boyfriend have passed away, and in the midst of trying to sort out her affairs, it seems that the DOB on her accounts with Nationwide have been changed - to that of her live in boyfriend, who despite legally never changing his name, now purports to ownership of the house! 
Does anyone know how easily it would have been to change dates of birth on joint accounts, historically, at the Nationwide? clearly in this day and age it is very difficult, but i fear this change was done a very long time ago.  
This historical treat seems to pick up on similar issues:
Bank account has wrong date of birth - how to change — MoneySavingExpert Forum
Any and all help gratefully received! 

theoretica

Is the property on the digital land registry?  Where are the paper deeds?

Knockmore73

Hi there - thanks a lot. we have the original charge with names on it, but no DOBs... nothing on land registry with DOBs either. 

eskbanker

Knockmore73 said:

In the mid 80's a friend of mine had a joint Nationwide mortgage with his sister to buy a house in the UK; and they owned the house together. There is seemingly no record of the mortgage application from then. over time, my friend's sister allowed her boyfriend to stay with her in her house.my friend's sister and boyfriend have passed away, and in the midst of trying to sort out her affairs, it seems that the DOB on her accounts with Nationwide have been changed - to that of her live in boyfriend, who despite legally never changing his name, now purports to ownership of the house! 
Does anyone know how easily it would have been to change dates of birth on joint accounts, historically, at the Nationwide?

It's a bit difficult to work out the dramatis personae from this - if the sister's boyfriend passed away then how can he be claiming ownership of (her share of?) the property?  Is your friend still alive and facing a challenge from the executor(s) of his sister's boyfriend's estate perhaps?  Has the mortgage been paid off, and if not, has he (friend) submitted a formal subject access request to Nationwide seeking clarification of all info about exactly who he's sharing the mortgage with?  If the mortgage has been paid off, what happened to the discharge paperwork?  Was ownership held as tenants in common or joint tenants?  In any case, dates of birth in themselves shouldn't determine ownership - it's the names that count primarily....

theoretica

Knockmore73 said:

Hi there - thanks a lot. we have the original charge with names on it, but no DOBs... nothing on land registry with DOBs either. 

So who does the land registry say own it?  Boyfriend and your friend don't have the same name or do they?

There were a lot of people born the same day I was (about 500 in the UK) - doesn't mean I can go around claiming to own their houses if I like them.

Zanderman

As others have said, DoB has nothing to do with house ownership.  It's the name that matters.
The DoB issue seems to be a banking problem - it seems that that's what you're asking about?
Some clarification, as Eskbanker says above, of who's doing/saying what and how they fit in to the scenario would be useful - you refer to the boyfriend passing away but also a boyfriend who's still alive.  

Edited to add:  this is, if you're correct in saying boyfriend changed the DoB to himself and now claims ownership of the house, to be attempted fraud and should be reported as such.

Knockmore73

Thanks everyone for the help on these matters; super appreciated and i hope you can get the sense of frustration we're living and breathing at the minute. both my friend's sister and her boyfriend have passed away. her boyfriend and my friend, shared the same first name. my friend and his sister, obviously share the same surname. the boyfriend's family, claim he was known as an alias - his name, and my friend's surname, and is claiming ownership of the house. 
the house issue, however, is a side query - the query i have is on the Nationwide bank statement, as it has the boyfriend's date of birth attributed to it. i wondered how easy this would have been to change back in the day, and if so, what records should/could a bank hold. its pretty sad story all together. 

theoretica

The land registry will show the name owning the house in 198x when it was bought - was the boyfriend even in the relationship by then?

jbuchanangb

Let's see if we understand things. In the 80s Mr. A Friend joined with his sister Miss Friend and they bought a house. They had a mortgage in joint names with the Nationwide.

Miss Friend then invited her boyfriend to live with her, he adopted the name Mr. B. Friend but never changed his legal name. Sadly Miss Friend and Mr B. Friend have passed away, and dealing with their estates, naturally Mr. A Friend expects that the house will revert to him. Although what happens may depend on the Will of Miss Friend, and also depends on whether the purchased as "joint tenants" or "tenants in common".

The relatives of Mr. B. Friend dealing with his estate consider that the property should be part of that estate.

The land registry should have no difficulty in clarifying that the house was owned by Mr. A Friend and Miss Friend, and the executors of the estate of Miss Friend can deal with that.

There seems to be a question about a joint account.

Is this the joint mortgage account in the names of Mr. A Friend and Miss Friend, or is this another account held jointly by Miss Friend and Mr B Friend?

If the former, then Mr A Friend is now responsible for the account. If the latter, then the disposition of the funds will depend somewhat on which of the joint owners died first. If Miss Friend died first, then the account would have become the property of Mr B. Friend, and vice versa, I suppose.

born_again

I would question that a bank would allow a change of DOB. As that is a fact and not something you can change.
If they did allow it then it would have been clearly noted and the exact reason why.

I can only think of one reason a bank may allow it, and that would be if customer had suffered ID theft & they allowed the change for security reasons to allow the customer to clear security. But the real DOB would have to be the same for obvious reasons.
But that would be so obvious in notes on account.

Knockmore73

Thanks again everyone for the help - this is a really complicated one. jbuchanangb - you are right in your summation. however, a few very important points to note - Miss A Friend died without a will, as did her Boyfriend - Mr B Boyfriend. Mr B Boyfriend's executors have secured a probate for Mr B Boyfriend, aka, Mr B Friend, on the basis of a sworn statement and the fact that Mr B Boyfriend had in his possestion at the time of his death, bank cards in the name of Mr B Friend! All of that is subject to ongoing dispute etc... the key bit of help and thought i am looking for is, how could Mr B Friend have had the DOB of the account held by my friend and his sister, changed, to his DOB.