House "In Trust" but still in name of deceased Mother

Keep_pedalling

This sounds like a life interest trust which are very straight forward where the life tenant is a surviving spouse but a bit more complicated tax wise where it is not a spouse, which is why you really need professional advice. 

You can sell the property from the estate but after 3 years you are likely to have CGT liability on any increase over the probate value and the estate only gets one allowance. If you owned it jointly your brother’s share would be exempt as is is his main residence and you and your other sibling each have an allowance for your share. I believe it may be possible to do this without making changes at the LR but again you need professional advice.

The trust should have been registered with HMRC, was that done?

optimist?

This is the sort of complication that none of us were aware of -except for my suspicion, at the time of reading the Will, that Mother had saddled me, as the main executor, with an unidentifiable time bomb of bureacracy. She died only two weeks before Covid became a major obstacle to doing anything about anything, so my brother stayed as he was, in the family home, and subsequent lockdowns ensured that I could do almost nothing except ensure he was safe for the duration of that emergency.

 Maintaining the status quo was, after all, in line with Mothers wishes in the Will : he could stay in residence there for as long as HE wished.  The "Trust" was never registered with HMRC, or anyone else,since we did not know that it needed to be. Reading the HMRC website it seems we are now over the deadline for registering it with them and may be liable to a fine. Fine. Frankly I am past caring.

Also we can expect CGT to apply to any realised amount, apportioned to my and my sisters share but not to that of my brother.  Fine, just so long as I am following some sort of known, and correct, procedure - of which we were previously unaware.