Inherited house - Trying to but out one sibling who is unwilling to sell

TeaBagMania

chainsawpaddy wrote: »

Wish I could, but he was always mammy's pet and it was their mothers wishes that the house be left to all three. Their mother made ALL the mortgage payments until her passing, but the freeloader was the only one living there until June of last year, almost ten years.

Right now my partner is paying the mortgage and the freeloader is scraping together his half of the mortgage monthly, and doing lots of moaning in the process that he can't afford to. But the mortgage will be cleared in the coming months, so thats his incentive for hanging in there.

Got it, thanks for the clarification. So what are you and your partner’s goal, do you want to buy out the brothers shares and live there or divide it up equally and everyone go their separate ways?
Did the mother have any other assets the BB might go after, jewelry, cash, cars, etc? Might be a good idea to start an inventory list

ted1

You need legal advice.

It's the free loaders family home. Your partner living there had stripped him off squatters rights.

chainsawpaddy

ted1 wrote: »

You need legal advice.

It's the free loaders family home. Your partner living there had stripped him off squatters rights.

I certainly hope so, but will get my partner to seek advice.

TeaBagMania

drunkmonkey wrote: »

But they never paid for the house, the mother paid for the house. Yes there names are on the mortgage but the mother paid for it. This is going to get complicated. If it wasn't the mothers house how is she dictating what's happening to it after she's left, it's her house.

Yep that’s where it’s going to get complicated, the OP’s partner and the GB took out the mortgage and I would guess technically on paper are the legal owners but the mother made the payments, so who really owns the house. Only a solicitor\court can decide
If it’s decided the OP’s partner and GB are the legal owners than they could tell the BB to pack his bags without a cent

chainsawpaddy

Mrs OBumble wrote: »

Who is paying for the insurance on the house now? It should be the owners. In a recent case in Galway, being able to prove that he had insured the house was how an owner stopped an adverse-possession claim.

OP, your partner and good-brother need both tax and legal advice. There may be tax-implications associated with the gifts (ie mortgage payments) that the mother made to them, as well as with the free accommodation provider to other-brother.

But you should also look into the implications that receiving a lump of cash would have on other-brother's welfare payment. Most of these are asset tested. Make sure that other-brother does some thinking about this, too. It may soften his cough considerably.

Certainly noted the insurance advice.

In relation to the inheritance, I have no idea what is happening as I don't ask any questions. That is their business.

I just want to buy their shares out of the house, honestly and fairly. This is what my partner wants, to live and raise a family in the house.

groovyg

Op This isn't really your problem as its connected to your partner they should be the one phoning a solicitor.
Forget about buying people out, if you have the finances to buy a house why don't you buy a different house in the area that doesn't come with a whole load of heartache and legal trouble.
Inheritance issues around houses and land etc can rip families apart you would best to stay well out of it.

pwurple

What an unholy mess. Talk about lack of foresight and people trying to pull fast ones all over the place. That has backfired fairly spectacularly.

Who is the executor of the mother's will, or was there any estate to divide?


To echo everyone else, this house is not part of the inheritance, so forget inheritance laws. This was the mother and other brother effectively renting the house from the other two children, without any of the accompanying required legal agreements (or taxes I might add!). If this had been done properly from the beginning, with a mortgage in the right person's name, house in mothers name, and associated life insurance, the remainder of the mortgage would be paid off now by the life policy, and inheritance would apply... but that is not the case here.

You can seek legal advice on how to evict someone who has never been officially renting. But morally, evicting someone out of the house which was effectively paid for by the mother, and whom she wished to gift to her three children... it kinda stinks.

chainsawpaddy

groovyg wrote: »

Op This isn't really your problem as its connected to your partner they should be the one phoning a solicitor.
Forget about buying people out, if you have the finances to buy a house why don't you buy a different house in the area that doesn't come with a whole load of heartache and legal trouble.
Inheritance issues around houses and land etc can rip families apart you would best to stay well out of it.

The problem is not the whole family, it's one ungrateful, but very fortunate person who has had everything handed to him, throughout his entire life. My partners wishes are to have her mothers house and as I'm in a position to give it to her, it becomes my problem.

There are no other houses in this area for sale, but thats not the point. My partner wants her mothers house. The only alternative is to put the house on the market and sell it. But it will probably be me buying it anyway through someone else, resulting in Auctioneer fees, which I was hoping to avoid.

SusanC10

OP - Get your Partner to get Legal Advice and Tax Advice ASAP.

This situation is very very messy and for now you are not involved legally and you should keep it that way until the entire situation becomes clearer.

Your Partner and one of her Brothers own this property legally - is it Joint Tenants or Tenants-in-Common ? If it is Tenants-in-Common then either of them can sell their 50% share to whomever they wish.

Issues with the other brother having lived in the property for so long.

There are issues with Tax - if the Mother's payment of the Mortgage is seen as a gift to your partner and her brother or if it is seen as Rent then there are CAT and Income Tax issues.

Multiple, multiple issues. To repeat - strongly advise your Partner to get proper Legal and Tax Advise on the entire situation asap. And do not become legally or financially involved in matters yourself as things stand.

Edit to Add : If you do wish to purchase the other 50% share of the Property make sure that you get your own Solicitor - an Independent one.

chainsawpaddy

pwurple wrote: »

What an unholy mess. Talk about lack of foresight and people trying to pull fast ones all over the place. That has backfired fairly spectacularly.

Who is the executor of the mother's will, or was there any estate to divide?


To echo everyone else, this house is not part of the inheritance, so forget inheritance laws. This was the mother and other brother effectively renting the house from the other two children, without any of the accompanying required legal agreements (or taxes I might add!). If this had been done properly from the beginning, with a mortgage in the right person's name, house in mothers name, and associated life insurance, the remainder of the mortgage would be paid off now by the life policy, and inheritance would apply... but that is not the case here.

You can seek legal advice on how to evict someone who has never been officially renting. But morally, evicting someone out of the house which was effectively paid for by the mother, and whom she wished to gift to her three children... it kinda stinks.

Yes, it's a total mess up and yes they are aware of the situation regarding the mortgage and life insurance. But unfortunatly their mother could not get a mortgage at the time and as you can imagine it was never her intention to die from cancer in her mid 50's.

And to reiterate, their mother only lived in the house for ~3 months in that 10 years. There was no will.

He is going to have to leave the house once it is sold, either to us or to a stranger. This 36 year old person spends their day playing video games, while living off the state. He is on the dole so long now that I am sure that there would be no issue in getting housing benefit, so I am not too concerned for him.

The state breeds these things and gives them more than enough support to live on, so where he puts his head down is the states problem, not mine.

And to add I am not trying to pull any fast ones. I have got two independent auctioneers in the last month to value the house and I am prepared to pay each of the siblings the market value for their share of the house.

stoplooklisten

chainsawpaddy wrote: »

...

And to reiterate, their mother only lived in the house for ~3 months in that 10 years. There was no will.
....

she might have only lived there 3 months, but she paid the mortgage from the beginning

chainsawpaddy wrote: »

......Their mother did not live in the house for most of this time, but she paid for the mortgage since the beginning, .......

so according to your posts, your partner and the freeloader have made the same contribution towards paying the mortgage, only your partner has her names on the deeds?

chainsawpaddy

SusanC10 wrote: »

OP - Get your Partner to get Legal Advice and Tax Advice ASAP.

This situation is very very messy and for now you are not involved legally and you should keep it that way until the entire situation becomes clearer.

Your Partner and one of her Brothers own this property legally - is it Joint Tenants or Tenants-in-Common ? If it is Tenants-in-Common then either of them can sell their 50% share to whomever they wish.

Issues with the other brother having lived in the property for so long.

There are issues with Tax - if the Mother's payment of the Mortgage is seen as a gift to your partner and her brother or if it is seen as Rent then there are CAT and Income Tax issues.

Multiple, multiple issues. To repeat - strongly advise your Partner to get proper Legal and Tax Advise on the entire situation asap. And do not become legally or financially involved in matters yourself as things stand.

Edit to Add : If you do wish to purchase the other 50% share of the Property make sure that you get your own Solicitor - an Independent one.

Thank you Susan for your response. It's an ungodly mess, I know. How can she find out whether is it Joint Tenants or Tenants-in-Common? I'm sure a solicitor could find this out.

I will encourage her to get advice now and not to wait until the mortgage is cleared.

Many thanks.

CIARAN_BOYLE

Just playing devils advocate here.

How much equity is there?
How much comes from your partner and her brother buying the property?
How much comes from your partner's mother paying the mortgage?
How much was wiped out by the fall in the value of the house?

If the majority of the equity came from the mother paying the mortgage surely it should be residue in the mothers estate and divided 33% to each of three siblings.

SusanC10

chainsawpaddy wrote: »

Thank you Susan for your response. It's an ungodly mess, I know. How can she find out whether is it Joint Tenants or Tenants-in-Common? I'm sure a solicitor could find this out.

I will encourage her to get advice now and not to wait until the mortgage is cleared.

Many thanks.

Strongly advise her to go to a Solicitor asap. Do not wait until the Mortgage is paid. The information re type of Tenancy (Ownership) will be on the Deeds to the Property which the Solicitor will need to see before advising.

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread - I'd step back from this if I were you, let them sort it out themselves.

EternalHope

drunkmonkey wrote: »

But they never paid for the house, the mother paid for the house. Yes there names are on the mortgage but the mother paid for it. This is going to get complicated. If it wasn't the mothers house how is she dictating what's happening to it after she's left, it's her house.

and the mother wanted it shared among all three including who the op condescendingly call the freeloader. what is it to the op if he worked or not. the mother was happy to have him there. and the op infer his illness is not real. How does the op know

Sorry drunkmonkey i originally though you were the op. changed it now

spaceHopper

So the just of it is that, your OH's mother lives in a second house while paying the mortgage on the first house which is owned legally by your OH and her good bother. Her bad brother lived in this house alone for the best part of 10 years except for July 2015 to Sept 2015 when he shared it with your OH and her mother. Her dying request was that you split the house which she paid for 3 ways. Clearly she wanted BB to be looked after.

OK so what happened to the house she lived in for rest of the 10 years, did it go with the business or is it still in the family.

You OH wants to keep the house which is in her and GB's name. GB is happy to agree to anything. The house has lost value in the crash.

You clearly have total contempt for BB.


Or from BB's side of it it's his HOME and you are trying to take it off him? It's not his fault you property market and economic crash occurred.

His child was her grand child too.

Then there is the mess that your OH's mother paid the mortgage on a house she didn't own and left no will.

Even if they sort out the mess of her paying the mortgage on "their" house the law will say a 1/3 split. If you go all legal on it and fight that you will run up a nice big fat bill.

The only clean way out of this is to get BB on side, he will need to either buy the other two out or have enough to buy something else for himself. He'll have to be happy about that too. Be very careful as there is a good chance he would qualify for free legal aid and drag you through the courts at your expense.

In short do a deal,
A) Give him a chance to buy the house and let your OH take some comfort that it has stayed in the family, that her mother would be happy she respected her dying wishes and move on.
If he can't get it together to buy the house put the alternative to him, of you OH buying him out.
C) If that doesn't work sell the house and don't try to buy it as he'll find a way to cause trouble it just won't be worth it.

EternalHope

spaceHopper wrote: »

So the just of it is that, your OH's mother lives in a second house while paying the mortgage on the first house which is owned legally by your OH and her good bother. Her bad brother lived in this house alone for the best part of 10 years except for July 2015 to Sept 2015 when he shared it with your OH and her mother. Her dying request was that you split the house which she paid for 3 ways. Clearly she wanted BB to be looked after.

OK so what happened to the house she lived in for rest of the 10 years, did it go with the business or is it still in the family.

You OH wants to keep the house which is in her and GB's name. GB is happy to agree to anything. The house has lost value in the crash.

You clearly have total contempt for BB.


Or from BB's side of it it's his HOME and you are trying to take it off him? It's not his fault you property market and economic crash occurred.

His child was her grand child too.

Then there is the mess that your OH's mother paid the mortgage on a house she didn't own and left no will.

Even if they sort out the mess of her paying the mortgage on "their" house the law will say a 1/3 split. If you go all legal on it and fight that you will run up a nice big fat bill.

The only clean way out of this is to get BB on side, he will need to either buy the other two out or have enough to buy something else for himself. He'll have to be happy about that too. Be very careful as there is a good chance he would qualify for free legal aid and drag you through the courts at your expense.

In short do a deal,
A) Give him a chance to buy the house and let your OH take some comfort that it has stayed in the family, that her mother would be happy she respected her dying wishes and move on.
If he can't get it together to buy the house put the alternative to him, of you OH buying him out.
C) If that doesn't work sell the house and don't try to buy it as he'll find a way to cause trouble it just won't be worth it.

I have seen similar situations. the people who go away want it both ways. it is 'their' home too even though they have their own homes. The mother paid the mortage from the start so it was her house and she left the so called freeloader so it was with her knowledge he paid no rent. That was her choice so why should he leave now.?And it may not affect his disability as a home is possibly exempt and not counted as mean. op seems to have a dislike of anyone who has an illness. anyone can get sick

chainsawpaddy

EternalHope wrote: »

and the mother wanted it shared among all three including who you condescendingly call the freeloader. what is it to you if he worked or not. the mother was happy to have him there. and you infer his illness is not real. How do you know

I truly hope that you are not someone who has been affected by someone who had or is currently suffering from depression, it's a terrible illness. But I can assure you, with great certainty, that this persons case is not genuine.

It's none of my concern if this person works or not, but it is my concern when it is affecting my partner.

And by "sharing among all three" do you mean the house is sold and divided into three? If so, then how can you have issue with me offering this person a full market value for their third stake in the house? He is not in a position to buy out two of his siblings.

SusanC10

SusanC10 wrote: »

There are issues with Tax - if the Mother's payment of the Mortgage is seen as a gift to your partner and her brother or if it is seen as Rent then there are CAT and Income Tax issues.
.

If the issue is notice re the mother paying the mortgage (which it may not be) a good accountant will work this to make it fall under a gift not income so CAT would apply. The ops partner and her brother who own the house will have a 225k threshold each (give or take it went up and down a few times) so even though its all a mess there is very unlikely to be tax owed as its highly unlikely the mother even got close to the CAT thresholds for the people involved.

EternalHope

chainsawpaddy wrote: »

I truly hope that you are not someone who has been affected by someone who had or is currently suffering from depression, it's a terrible illness. But I can assure you, with great certainty, that this persons case is not genuine.

It's none of my concern if this person works or not, but it is my concern when it is affecting my partner.

And by "sharing among all three" do you mean the house is sold and divided into three? If so, then how can you have issue with me offering this person a full market value for their third stake in the house? He is not in a position to buy out two of his siblings.

Are you a doctor to know he is not sick. you also speak with disdain of his sometime partner who is also on the dole. So? How is that relevant?. His mother wanted him in the house so why make an issue he did no pay rent?She paid the mortage and she wanted him there.

I have know someone with depression and genuinely ill who lived at home. other members of the family who had been able to work had their own houses yet wanted to be able to walk in to 'their' home when they liked and bring their friends and take over the house and not care how it affected his genuine illness.the y near drove him to suicide. is that depressed enough fore you?

If so, then how can you have issue with me offering this person a full market value for their third stake in the house?

has he a choice ? you seem to want to solve the issue your way. i don't think you have a right to judge his way of life or his partners ands since it was his mother's wish he live their and benefit he should be given a choice in the matter. seems to be all against one

I often see the dynamic- and it may not be yours- of all but one going off and making their own life but then the house is theirs to sell/share regardless of the one left

athtrasna

Pages and pages of the only logical answer.

Seek legal advice without delay.

And on that note, thread closed.