Understanding A will

VC8282

I give any house flat or dwelling that I own at the date of my death to my trustees upon trust to sell the same with power to postpone the sale thereof for so long as they shall in their absolute discretion think fit.  I am the beneficiary and would like to keep the house, do we have to sell the house  or can we keep as the wording says postpone the sale .  many thanks

Alphatauri

If you are the sole beneficiary then you can keep the house. 

Keep_pedalling

I am sure the executor(s) will be delighted they won’t have to go through the hassle of selling the house.

MobileSaver

Alphatauri said:

If you are the sole beneficiary then you can keep the house. 

That's assuming that there are sufficient other assets and/or monies in the estate to pay off any other obligatory estate debts, fees and taxes.

pjs493

As mentioned by someone above it might depend on if there are any other assets left to pay off any debts. If there aren’t, you may need to pay these yourself in order to prevent the sale of the house. 

 My husband died last year and I had to use some of my own money to pay off the mortgage on a flat he owned from before we married. His estate was solvent but unless I used some my own money to pay off the mortgage, there wouldn’t have been enough cash in the estate to pay it off. I didn’t want to sell the flat so I contributed a bit of my own money. The other option would have been for me to get a mortgage on the flat in my own name, but as I had the cash available to pay it off, that seemed like the most sensible option in my circumstances. 

It didn’t make sense to me to sell the flat for the sake of £20k I could withdraw from my ISA.