Joint Tenants to Tenants in Common & Will Trust

Goldman2020

A married couple are considering changing over the way in which they own their property from Joint Tenants to Tenants in Common.

What would be the benefits if any to change the property ownership over from Joint Tenants to Tenants in Common and to set up a Will Trust to provide a life interest in the property until such time as the surviving partner / spouse either permanently leaves the property, re-marries, co-habits or dies?

Would changing from Joint Tenants to Tenants in Common mitigate Inheritance in any way and if so and in simple terms how?

RAS

Try the death and probate forum.

Phild70

Personally I would avoid doing this at all costs, my late father was advised to do this by HSBC back in 2007, my mother now has advanced Alzheimer’s and we have had to move her into full time care. The family house was put on the market to pay for care fees and sold within the 2 weeks but the straight forward sale has been hugely delayed as we have to apply for probate due to the “tenants in common” and will trust for his 50% share with us as the execs. Its caused us a lot of stress as probate can take a while and we’re still waiting and have care fees to pay. That’s just my experience. 

jennifernil

We own our home in the scottish equivalent of tenants in common.  This means that we can each will our 50% share of the property to whoever we wish, in our case our children, rather than it passing automatically to the surviving spouse..

The surviving spouse can remain in the house if they wish, though in our case this will not happen as it would be far too big, or they can use the money from  the sale to move house to something more suitable.  In our case it is likely that the half share of the deceased spouse would then be passed to the children as it would not be required for the purchase of a smaller house.

Goldman2020

Thank you one and all for posting and I appreciate your input.

I have moved this over to the death and probate forum.

Ms_Chocaholic

Phild70 said:

Personally I would avoid doing this at all costs, my late father was advised to do this by HSBC back in 2007, my mother now has advanced Alzheimer’s and we have had to move her into full time care. The family house was put on the market to pay for care fees and sold within the 2 weeks but the straight forward sale has been hugely delayed as we have to apply for probate due to the “tenants in common” and will trust for his 50% share with us as the execs. Its caused us a lot of stress as probate can take a while and we’re still waiting and have care fees to pay. That’s just my experience. 

Was probate not applied for when your father died and the trust created?

Phild70

The trust was created by my father back in 2007 on the advice of HSBC when he changed to tenants in common. TBH we have been learning as we go along and only found out all this info when the house sold recently and this uncovered we had to apply for probate to complete the sale.