Update on dispute over jointly inherited house, and more questions

DepositSaver

Why do you need to pay half the costs of repairs and maintenance? You don't live there, a poorly maintained house doesn't really affect you. Just let it get run down. The less comfortable the house is to live in the more likely your brother is to do something.
Good question! I guess for various reasons - if I half own it, it's my asset and I would want to keep it in decent condition (though at this point I'm probably not that bothered it if depreciates in value, if I own half of it and something needs fixing my brother would likely feel entitled to harass me until I agree to pay, and also I wouldn't want it getting run down enough so that neighbours start complaining, Don't get me wrong, it's not currently in an awful state as far as I know. It needs a moderately expensive repair, everything in it is from the 70s (kitchen, bathroom, carpets etc) so anyone buying it would want to gut it, but it is structurally ok. Though if my brother doesn't maintain it who knows how long it will remain so, 

The way I see it you've got 3 options:

1) Bribe him. Explain that he'll ultimately have more and more issues and he can't afford to maintain the house nor pay the bills so it would be better for him to move somewhere smaller. In terms of the bribe offer him a bigger cut of the house proceeds to agree to the sale.
The way he has been talking I really don't see him agreeing to a sale even with a larger share of the proceeds. I've tried over and over again to ask him that as he can't afford the bills, how will he afford repairs, and he refuses to discuss it. 

2) Go legal and look to force the sale. Will ultimately lead to less money for both of you but from your perspective less of something is better than nothing.

3) Do nothing. It sounds like your brother will ultimately make his situation more and more difficult without any involvement from you. If he asks you for money (which he most certainly will) then say no. If he asks you to pay for essential repairs to the house then say no. If he says the electric has been cut off and he needs the money to get it reinstated then say no. It'll get to the point he's effectively living in a squat and his life will be miserable. At that point he might be a bit more willing to discuss this with you and agree to sell the house.
If I do nothing then one of us would need find insurance for once the current policy expires. I imagine what would be expensive, and as it would be in the estate's name, could only be a short term thing. 

Ultimately it's your choice. You'll need to be resilient though and not bow to pressure. If he gets threatening call the police.

DepositSaver

RAS said:

We certainly don't need letters of administration. And since the second executor resigned there is no way of an appointing a neutral administrator who has any power to do anything about your brother because your brother can simply instruct them to cease.

First you need to find out whether it is even possible for you to get letters of administration with will? Or has your brother already applied or been granted?

Because as administrator you can at least engage legal advice at the estate's cost to sort out the situation with your brother.

If his solicitor, who seems to have an understanding of the processes so far, has advised your brother further, he could have already got letters of administration himself. Which leaves you in a much weaker situation. In fact is a worse situation than if nothing had happened.

You have a choice, walk away and accept your and yours might get the scraps if your brother dies first or actively engage like yesterday to start to protect your interests.

Go to the government gov.uk probate registry and check if admin has been granted. Checking the index is free and you can download any grant for £1.50. If admin has not yet been granted, you might be able to find out if your brother or his solicitor has already applied. If he has you need a caveat, urgently.

Your brother claims he can't cope? Well he's doing an extremely good job of getting better advice than you and managing to release assets to alleviate his financial stresses. 

While you are about it, I'd suggest that you double check the deeds at the Land Registry, again use the gov.uk site at the cost of £3. If the house is registered in dad's name, then you need to sign up for alerts. Your brother won't know you've done that.

My brother hasn't already applied for LoA and I can't imagine he would. The solicitor he is talking to isn't his, it's the one who we were going to get to administer the estate and who holds my dad's will. I don't think he is giving my brother advice as such - my brother asked the solicitor whether he could access the money and was told that "we can do things as we wish". He then completed the form he'd got from the bank ages before and got the cash. It was under a certain amount of money so the bank said they didn't need probate/LoA. 

DepositSaver

I've just looked back over messages between my brother and me. He has occasionally in the past consulted an independent solicitor, and at one point asked for advice after I'd told him my preference was to follow the will and sell the house and split the proceeds 50-50. He was advised that unless he wanted to contest the will, he had to agree to sell. So even an independent solicitor has told him he needs to agree to sell, and he is still refusing. 

DepositSaver

I don't suppose anyone knows the answer to this question do they please?

• Having read back through the previous thread, there was a suggestion of getting my own solicitor to write to the administering solicitor stating that my considered wish is to have my 50% of the estate as set down in the will, and that to fulfil the terms of the will the house needs to be sold and the proceeds split, and that he needs to make this happen. Can I do this as an alternative to requesting an order for sale from a court? Would the administering solicitor sell when my brother hasn't agreed to do so? He had said he wouldn't act unless we agreed on what we want to do with the house.

Savvy_Sue

DepositSaver said:

I don't suppose anyone knows the answer to this question do they please?

• Having read back through the previous thread, there was a suggestion of getting my own solicitor to write to the administering solicitor stating that my considered wish is to have my 50% of the estate as set down in the will, and that to fulfil the terms of the will the house needs to be sold and the proceeds split, and that he needs to make this happen. Can I do this as an alternative to requesting an order for sale from a court? Would the administering solicitor sell when my brother hasn't agreed to do so? He had said he wouldn't act unless we agreed on what we want to do with the house.

It's a long time since I moved house (and I hope never to have to do so again), but I seem to remember that one of the earliest things to happen when you put a house on the market, is that every adult living there has to confirm that they will move out on completion, giving vacant possession. Doesn't matter whether they are a proper tenant, co-owner, lodger, live-in lover or sole beneficiary of that part of the estate: everyone in the house has to agree to give vacant possession on completion. He's not going to want to do that, is he?

I do think you're going to have to consult a different solicitor to get answers: I think - could be wrong - that only one person can apply for Letters of Administration, but that (as already either pointed out) either you or your brother are head of the queue for doing so: neither of you has priority over the other. Which means that the original solicitor may quite happily hand over the will to the first of you to request it (meaning he is well shot of the pair of you), OR that he will not hand it to either one of you unless the other agrees. I just don't know. He may be happier to hand it over to you via another solicitor, because he's still well shot of you both but he can have a reasonable hope that a fellow professional will try to avoid doing anything which might lead to your brother suing HIM (original solicitor) for handing it over ... 

Given the advice already given to him by an independent solicitor, is it possible that a letter from your independent solicitor pointing out that he can only contest the sale if he contests the will might drive some sense into him? 

BikingBud

 DepositSaver said:

sevenhills said:

It sounds to me that your brother might be better off in rented accommodation, with someone else maintaining the property. I haven't read the old thread, if your brother has difficulties, he may be better putting his name down for social housing, even if it takes more than a year.

Is he capable of looking after his own affairs, could/should you be his guardian?

Thank you. I've suggested to him several times that he'd be, better off renting somewhere. He mostly just ignores me, other than one occasion when he told me he wouldn't have any landlord references (having only ever lived with parents/a parent and now alone). He's never been willing to enter in to any discussion with me about renting.

I don't know if he'd get anywhere applying to social housing? He is a single adult male with no dependents. He does have some mental health issues, but is perfectly capable of looking after his own affairs. He's been doing so since my dad died, and it's only lack of money due to being unemployed that is causing him problems. He probably doesn't know the practicalities of finding a place to rent, but that's because he's never done it before. 

As there are no other dependents or relations of your brother would the outcome, if you both did nothing else, be that the other half of the house passes to you?

Does this give you a worst case fall back, and therefore a long-term position that might be acceptable?

DepositSaver

Savvy_Sue said:

DepositSaver said:

I don't suppose anyone knows the answer to this question do they please?

• Having read back through the previous thread, there was a suggestion of getting my own solicitor to write to the administering solicitor stating that my considered wish is to have my 50% of the estate as set down in the will, and that to fulfil the terms of the will the house needs to be sold and the proceeds split, and that he needs to make this happen. Can I do this as an alternative to requesting an order for sale from a court? Would the administering solicitor sell when my brother hasn't agreed to do so? He had said he wouldn't act unless we agreed on what we want to do with the house.

It's a long time since I moved house (and I hope never to have to do so again), but I seem to remember that one of the earliest things to happen when you put a house on the market, is that every adult living there has to confirm that they will move out on completion, giving vacant possession. Doesn't matter whether they are a proper tenant, co-owner, lodger, live-in lover or sole beneficiary of that part of the estate: everyone in the house has to agree to give vacant possession on completion. He's not going to want to do that, is he?

I do think you're going to have to consult a different solicitor to get answers: I think - could be wrong - that only one person can apply for Letters of Administration, but that (as already either pointed out) either you or your brother are head of the queue for doing so: neither of you has priority over the other. Which means that the original solicitor may quite happily hand over the will to the first of you to request it (meaning he is well shot of the pair of you), OR that he will not hand it to either one of you unless the other agrees. I just don't know. He may be happier to hand it over to you via another solicitor, because he's still well shot of you both but he can have a reasonable hope that a fellow professional will try to avoid doing anything which might lead to your brother suing HIM (original solicitor) for handing it over ... 

Given the advice already given to him by an independent solicitor, is it possible that a letter from your independent solicitor pointing out that he can only contest the sale if he contests the will might drive some sense into him? 

Thank you this. You're right, he's not just going to agree to give vacant possession it I tried to put it on the market, but if a court had said it can be sold, or even just a solicitor had written to him to point out that he can't contest that sale unless he contests the will, that might make him see sense. 

You make good points about whether or nor the original solicitor would just handover the will. With all the suggestions and thoughts from here in my mind, my next step has to be advice from an independent solicitor, and then I make a decision on what to do.

I was thinking last night about the bribery suggestion. I don't know what my brother would be interested given his insistence on "I just want to stay here", but if he did, we are past the time limit for a deed or variation to change the split in the will from 50 -50. I assume though, that if the house were sold and the proceeds split 50 50 I could then give him whatever amount from my share to make it a 60 40 or 70 30 split. 

DepositSaver

BikingBud said:

 DepositSaver said:

sevenhills said:

It sounds to me that your brother might be better off in rented accommodation, with someone else maintaining the property. I haven't read the old thread, if your brother has difficulties, he may be better putting his name down for social housing, even if it takes more than a year.

Is he capable of looking after his own affairs, could/should you be his guardian?

Thank you. I've suggested to him several times that he'd be, better off renting somewhere. He mostly just ignores me, other than one occasion when he told me he wouldn't have any landlord references (having only ever lived with parents/a parent and now alone). He's never been willing to enter in to any discussion with me about renting.

I don't know if he'd get anywhere applying to social housing? He is a single adult male with no dependents. He does have some mental health issues, but is perfectly capable of looking after his own affairs. He's been doing so since my dad died, and it's only lack of money due to being unemployed that is causing him problems. He probably doesn't know the practicalities of finding a place to rent, but that's because he's never done it before. 

As there are no other dependents or relations of your brother would the outcome, if you both did nothing else, be that the other half of the house passes to you?

Does this give you a worst case fall back, and therefore a long-term position that might be acceptable?

Thank you, I'm not sure what you mean by if we both did nothing else the outcome would be that the other half of the house passes to me? If we both do nothing the house remains in the name of my dad's estate and even if we manage to insure it at expiry this year, I imagine no insurer would insure it forever in the name of the estate. So we need to do something. Or do you mean that if my brother dies before me, his half would come to me? I don't know the answer to that as I don't know if he has a will and if he does, what's in it. If he doesn't then yes it would come to me I guess (though how that works if it's still in my dad's name I don't know). But if he has a will I doubt he'd leave it to me, he has no wife and no dependents but does have someone close to him he might leave it too (though that person will almost certainly die before my brother so I don't know what would happen then). 

DepositSaver

I think my priority with this is that I do not want the outcome to be that I co-own the house with my brother. He can be unreasonable, uncooperative, short tempered and demanding, and has a history of harassing me and other family members when we aren't doing or haven't done something he thinks we should have, or we are doing it but not quickly enough, or we just haven't responded quickly enough. Or alternatively, if we don't agree on something just refuses to discuss it. I can't own a house with someone like that, it would be far too stressful. I appreciate that someone pointed out that I don't have to pay for repairs and maintenance, and while that is true, and I would say no (because I can't afford it) that would result in an angry reaction and him bombarding me with messages saying how awful I am. I've put up with that sort of thing from him for years, for the sake of my dad, but I can't  and shouldn't have to put up with it happening indefinitely because we co-own a house. 

Sea_Shell

So, basically it comes down to this...

It's been just over 3 years since your Dad died, and you're no further forward.
Brother isn't interested in anything other than staying put.
It could take ANOTHER 3 years to force your brother out, not to mention £££

If you are adamant you don't want to co-own, (and i totally get why), then you're back to two very stark options.

Go down the legal, forced sale and eviction route.
Or sign away your 50% and just get it done and dusted and then leave him to it.*

Only you know what emotional energy you have left for the fight, which sounds like it would be much harder than the last 3 years have been.  Are you really ready to go "all in" to get him out.   

Although he would have cash for a new place, after the sale, he would probably be temporarily homeless, in the gap between selling and finding somewhere new, AIUI there is little or no cash left in the estate to bridge the move.  ie deposit on a new place.     


* I take it you're not in receipt of (or likely to be in the future) any state benefits, as this could be seen as deprivation of assets, which could affect you qualifying for them.