No Deeds & No Land Registry entry

Golden2sun

Father died recently, leaving his share of the home to my Mother (in trust to me and 2 siblings). They've lived in the house for over 55yrs and it was never registered with the land registry. My mother has also been unable to locate the Deeds. How do we go about getting the Deeds which I assume are needed before the house can be registered?

Keep_pedalling

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/first-registration-of-title-where-deeds-have-been-lost-or-destroyed/practice-guide-2-first-registration-of-title-if-deeds-are-lost-or-destroyed

I see a second problem here in that without the deeds you don't know the status of the ownership, tenants in common or joint tenants if is was the latter then your father could not leave the house in trust it would pass to your mother as the surviving joint tenant. 

I am not sure how that pans out if the original deeds cannot be found perhaps @Land_registry can help with that one.

Slowplod

If your mum knows who their mortgage was with it may be worth checking if they are holding the deeds in a deeds safe.  My in-laws house was never registered so we had to request them from the Building Society when my father-in-law passed away. Hope you manage to track them down..

Section62

Slowplod said:

If your mum knows who their mortgage was with it may be worth checking if they are holding the deeds in a deeds safe.  My in-laws house was never registered so we had to request them from the Building Society when my father-in-law passed away. Hope you manage to track them down..

Or the solicitor they used to buy the house, or they might have been using around the time the mortgage was paid off.

Land_Registry

Keep_pedalling said:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/first-registration-of-title-where-deeds-have-been-lost-or-destroyed/practice-guide-2-first-registration-of-title-if-deeds-are-lost-or-destroyed

I see a second problem here in that without the deeds you don't know the status of the ownership, tenants in common or joint tenants if is was the latter then your father could not leave the house in trust it would pass to your mother as the surviving joint tenant. 

I am not sure how that pans out if the original deeds cannot be found perhaps @Land_registry can help with that one.

If the deeds are lost then any statement of truth will need to deal with that loss and offer up the facts to show that they did buy together and how the property was held. If he 'left his share' then presumably there's a will/deed of trust or similar that confirms. 
Do seek legal advice/assistance and that should include what happens next re not only registering for the first time but also how his share/the children's interests are dealt with/protected 

Keep_pedalling

55 years ago it was very uncommon for a marital home to be held as TiC so it is unlikely that this was actually the case. When was his will made and was this not looked at by their solicitor at the time? The usual approach would be to sever the tenancy at the time of making a will, but that would have required the house to be registered at the same time. 

RAS

There've been a number of cases on this forum where solicitors have written wills which leave a life half the property to the children with a interest to the spouse but neither the solicitor or the couple have ever severed the tenancy.

It may be that the couple don't appreciate the importance of doing this, or if mortgaged it may have required negotiations with the bank/building society that never completed.

And it was common in 1970 for mortgaged property to be solely owned by the husband. As a mortgagee in 1975, my mother was a rare beast in the lower middle class. 

Keep_pedalling

Another thought, is having half the house in trust something that is really needed? Useful for a blended family or younger surviving spouse where they are more likely to remarry, but otherwise not much point. I know some do it to protect half the house from care costs but that is not really in the best interest of the surviving spouce.

RAS

It does protect half the house on remarriage.

sheramber

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81854419#Comment_81854419

I had a joint mortgage with my husband in 1970. Nobody suggested otherwise.

Both incomes were included in the application.

The mortgage was based on twice my husband’s income plus half of mine. That was the standard in these days as it was anticipated wife would stop working to have children.

SVaz

The chances of a Solicitor ( even if they still exist) having property deeds after 55 years are pretty much zero.

They may bein deep archive storage via the bank/building society who had the mortgage, which is what happened with my Dad’s house. Mortgage paid off in 1996, Building society had been bought out by Barclays at some point.

The only way the deeds were traced was pure fluke, a Woman at Barclays bereavement dept. had long ago worked for the Building society and knew of the archive storage facility in Liverpool - if we hadn’t had the original mortgage paperwork with the account number, they would never have been found, it took six months as it was.
We were getting ready to have the Deeds reconstructed by that point.