Freehold purchase not registered at land registry

flissyroe11

Hi,

I hope someone can shed light on my situation. In 1981 my father in law purchased the freehold of his home. It was a massive thing for him to do & he was very proud to have done this. Fast forward to today, we lost my father in law to covid & the property was put on the market. We found out with the solicitors that it was leasehold. To cut along story short, the solicitors that acted for my father in law agreed it should have been completed but they have no paperwork going back that far, to confirm it was, The header lease is missing. No solicitor is bothered, they just say sell it with an indemnity policy, but this is a principle to get it sorted. Any suggestions would be appreciated how we can tackle this problem.

Slithery

Just because your FiL bought the freehold doesn't make it a freehold-only property. It could be the case that he simply owned both the freehold and the leasehold at the same time and didn't bother getting them merged.
Is there any paperwork in your FiL's belongings referencing the freehold purchase?

Land_Registry

Is the freehold registered? And you refer to a ‘header lease’ so is there a freehold, a head lease and a sub lease? 

If the freehold is unregistered and the deeds are lost then you’d need to consider PG 2 
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/first-registration-of-title-where-deeds-have-been-lost-or-destroyed

But if your solicitor is saying an indemnity policy is the way to go then do discuss matters further 

canaldumidi

As a simple cheap step, search for the registered titles here. How many are there, and what?