Co-owned house - causing friction

My mum, sister and I own a property together (my sister 25% each since our father died 14 years ago, M&D were separated at the time of his death but not divorced).

My sis and I found out the other day that our mum has instructed quite significant work to the property. She noticed that the plaster/render had blown under one of the windows, so she called a builder that she knows (he re-covered her shed roof last summer) and he chipped a bit away and then said that the whole house had blown and needed removing and re-rendering. Within 1 day they had put up scaffolding and stripped the house (original quote for work was £11.5K). My sister was a little shocked when she drove past! I don't live locally so haven't seen it but have seen photos.

Of course (and I’m not surprised) they have found areas of brickwork that are damaged/soaking wet and falling out, wet beams and mum has since told us that there has been water leaking into the spare bedroom for years – now the quote is up to £16.5K.

A bit of background. At the time of our Dad’s death, mum was still working but on a low income and was panicking about how she would cope with any large maintenance bills (ie, new roof), if needed and we assured her at the time that if needed we would somehow work it out between us. We also agreed that this was her home and she was responsible for its’ upkeep, general maintenance, wear and tear, decoration, bills etc. We do not live there, and haven’t for 25+ years and have our own homes to pay for. Since this time she has received money from Dad’s estate, an inheritance, our dads pension, her pension and has re-married and he gives her money too, so her financial situation is far better than ours.

Mum has, in the past instructed various workmen to do odd jobs around the property which have been done badly - one of them definitely contributed to water getting into the property as she paid someone to run a cable from the roof and they just dangled it from the roof without securing it and drilled through the front of the house and didn’t fill the hole, you could see daylight through it, but she doesn’t care about this, has never got it rectified, she just pays them and they move on.

Following these incidents we asked mum to discuss any work that could de-value (or indeed add value) to the house before instructing anyone, and we would get 3 quotes and opinions before doing anything (which I would always be happy to do for her).

Mum is paying for this work, so in her eyes we don’t have a say but we are very worried that this building company are not up to the task (we have no proof of this and very much hope that all will be OK, but her argument that she “knows” him because he replaced the flat roof on the shed is not good enough as a recommendation for this scope of work from our perspective).

We feel strongly that as soon as they told her there was a bigger issue she should have said “Ok, this is a much bigger job than I originally thought, I would be happy for you to quote, but I need to discuss this with my family” and I would have done some research and found a couple of alternative companies to come and take a look, give their opinion and advice and do all we can realistically to try and protect Mum’s best interests financially and the property.

Our only concerns are protecting mum and the family home, but she has got very defensive and quite nasty and this has caused quite a lot of friction between us. We are determined not to fall out but it is very hard when someone is screaming down the phone. I don’t think we are being unreasonable but Mums' view is that we think she is an idiot and that we wouldn’t trust anyone that she has hired, which is not fair.

Last night we emailed the builder and explained that we are co-owners and that we wish to be copied on all quotes and correspondence. We have also requested copies of his insurance details, he says that his work is “guaranteed” for 20 years, and I asked how, in practice that works if his company goes out of business in 5 years – his answer was “this was my dads’ business, and has been going for years, so that will never happen”!

If you've got this far, thanks for reading!

What to do….