Unregistered Property - Death of Joint Owner.

lukedluke

Hi my parents home is in England ©400k and owned jointly since 1986. Therefore it is not on the new property register.

Dad died last year, probate was not needed as all money was already with mum or joint accounts. Their wills left everything to each other.

I am my Dads executor, and also I am looking after mums financials I do have power of attorney for her, but it is not needed yet as she is in good health and has full capacity, just no interest or understanding of money matters.

I am deciding if we should employ a solicitor to register the property in my Mums name. I have got some quotes but seem to be looking at ©500 + vat and the registration fee. So the best part of a grand.

I am trying to weigh up if it makes sense to do this now or wait until Mum goes and I need to register it in my name or sell it. Obviously there will be conveyancing fees then but are we saving by doing this part now ? also considering inflationary increases in fees.

I understand the fraud risk with an unregistered property but I have the deeds and obviously possession and its been this way for many years.

I know they have talked about a program to register all properties at some point, but I guess they will need to offer some kind of amnesty or free service to do this, so again does it make sense to wait.

Just wondering what other people have done and what the benefits are either way, I would assume this is a fairly common situation for a lot of people.

Any help or advice is greatly appreciated.

silvercar

Get it done now. It will sort out any issues that could arise while your mother is alive, just in case she needs to sign something to say “that’s how it’s always been” in relation to access or something else. It also smooths the waves when the time comes to sell as it will be one less hurdle to cross.

An amnesty won’t necessarily mean free of charge, so you can’t rely on that.

Also, if your mother did lose capacity, it would be difficult to do as you’d have to act in her best interests and it won’t make a difference to her.

daveyjp

As its a job which will have to be done at some point do it asap. Registration sounds simple, but it can be lengthy if an issue is raised during the process which wasn't expected.

Keep_pedalling

Does your mother have the paper deeds? If she does then the process will be fairly straight forward whenever it is done. If not it is somewhat more complex and I would look at getting it done now.

FreeBear

Do it now as a voluntary registration - The fee is lower than if you wait to do a compulsory first registration.

If you have all the original conveyancing documents and can trace ownership back to the first sale, it isn't too hard to do the registration yourself. I did a compulsory FR myself without the aid of a solicitor when I took on the family estate. The hardest part was tracking down the deeds which was eventually found in a solicitor's archive.