At first sight, this looked like a bit of a headscratcher. An Empty Homes Officer in the West Country had been struggling with a property which seemed to be Stuck In Probate Hell. She buzzed me for a no-obligation chat about it and subsequently decided to refer it to us for help. The property had been unoccupied for over a decade and the neighbours, although not thrilled about it, had done their best to keep it looking reasonably presentable. Fortunately, title was registered and the owner, Jack, had passed away intestate, survived by his partner, Diane, who’d died 18 months or so later, also intestate. Nobody had done anything about probate on either estate. Jack and Diane had lived in the property for many years and were known to have been married. So far, so not-overly-problematic. Assuming Diane had inherited the property on Jack’s intestacy it would devolve on her intestacy to her next of kin – and this was the route that the EHO had tried to go down. However, although Jack and Diane had the same surname and had indeed been married, they had never, as it turned out, been married to each other…
A potential can of worms, dealt with straightforwardly
Our top priority at all times is to do everything we can to support EHOs as they BEHBIU* regardless of the complexity of matters they ask us for help with - and this case did seem tricky until we examined it closely. A few people had taken a look and drawn a blank – hence it being Stuck In Probate Hell. However, our approach is to demonstrate the true position by thorough research and the documentary record, rather than necessarily taking things at face value without verifying the story. Self-evidently, for Jack’s property to find a new owner and come Back Into Use it would need to go through probate, together with the rest of his estate. Similarly, although she didn’t own any part of Jack’s property, we discovered that Diane also owned a property in another part of the country in her own name, also empty. For her property to change hands and be brought Back Into Use, Diane’s estate would also have to go through probate and we would therefore be dealing with two estates. Given Jack and Diane were neither married to each other nor blood-related, each was irrelevant to the estate of the other – we would need to conduct separate investigations, identifying and locating their respective next of kin, keeping our referring EHO client (and the EHO on Diane’s patch – he was surprised to hear from us but very happy that we’d be doing our best to solve one of his problem empties) fully in the picture throughout.
Family portrait
We rebuilt Jack’s family tree and Diane’s too. We showed that both had been married and divorced (so they could have married each other but presumably decided against it) and that neither had had children nor, coincidentally, siblings. In both cases the next of kin was in the class of the uncles and aunts of the whole blood and their issue – put simply, we would be reconstructing four families and looking for Jack and Diane’s cousins. It’s not unusual for cases like these to have an overseas element and many of the relevant family members were outside UK; in USA, Canada, Australia and continental Europe. No wonder nothing had happened with Jack’s property for so long…
Speed not haste and a happy outcome
As soon as we’d located and spoken to next of kin in both families, we applied for probate to both estates and as soon as the grants arrived started administering them, preparing both properties for sale. Each was sold to new owners and both were brought back into use to the delight of the neighbours and the EHOs in question. There was perhaps three months between our EHO client referring Jack’s property to us and our application for probate to his estate.
Key takeaway
Very many cases referred to us by EHOs are very straightforward to solve – often a quick database consultation delivers the up-to-date address of an absent owner while you wait and we handle these every day. Whether a case is a very simple look-up or, like the one above, seems to be a super-complex probate exam question (or anything in between), you are welcome to buzz me for an informal chat on 07850 739812 or email: nickbeetham@fraserandfraser.co.uk. We will always do our best to help you BEHBIU*.
*You know – Bring Empty Homes Back Into Use
