Property, Death & Possession

[spanky]

A property was purchased many years ago using the council right to buy.

At the time the purchasers were quite old and the bank required a "guarantor" to approve the mortgage, a guarantor was found, one of their sons.

The mortgage was setup as a Joint tennancy.

The Mortgage was paid off in the 80's, the deposit and all payments were made by Mum & Dad, of this we have the bank statements.

We have the original letter from the bank asking for the guarantor
We have the original letter from the council showing the right to buy for the mum & dad.

Mum died in 1992, and Dad late last year.

The "guarantor" is now living in the property under the assumption that it is now all his as per the rules of joint tennancy.

The "will" gave the house to be equally split between the 5 children, I do not believe he knew of this issue.

How do I go about proving the house is only 20% his, and then selling it to realise the value for the other 4 children?

I am speaking as if I were the executor of the will, or as one of the other children.

[JustinN]

From what you say, I gather that your parents bought the property jointly with a sibling of yours, with all 3 being "joint tenants", so that, as your parents died, the surviving owner(s) automatically inherited the property, leaving your sibling as the sole owener, even though your parents actually paid all the purcase and loan money

In order to overturn this, you would need to be able to prove that it was not, in fact, the parties' intention. To do this, you would need to contact the solicitors who acted at the time of the purchase, to see what advice they gave and what instructions they were given - I would be surprised if they say anything except that it was your parents' intention that your sibling should "inherit" the whole property autoatically, otherwise why did they not put in place arrangements to prevent that happening?

If you can find external evidence to show this was not your poarents' intention (the exact wording of the Will(s) may be of some help) this would be useful