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I am hopeful that somebody can advise a way forward.
I have a niece, my sisters' daughter and I have been immensely close to her for the majority of her life, whenever she needed help, I was there for her. Unfortunately, my niece has always been a “me first” type of person, an only child, spoilt rotten, extremely vindictive and controlling and truly horrible if she didn’t get her own way, this behaviour has unfortunately advanced into adult hood. She's 51 now but for the past three years she has been truly horrible to her parents, terrorizing them. It got really bad in the summer'22 that I had to report her to the police for which she hates me ....... I can live with that; I did what I thought was right.
Anyway, to the problem. In 2013, my niece approached me about a house that had recently come on the market, to see if I would be interested in purchasing it, knocking down the existing house and building three large houses on the site, one for me, one for my niece and her parents to live in together and a third to sell and share the profits. I thought this to be an excellent idea and my niece and I purchased the house/land 50:50.
The house is in the country side surrounded by green belt but I was fortunate in being able to obtain planning permission after which I designed and built two of the houses. The build of the two houses has been undertaken by me on a shoe string budget with finance coming from my sister and I on, say an 80:20 split. My niece, her family, together with my sister and brother-in-law moved into the new house, June'2018. Unfortunately, the week after moving in to the new house my niece was sacked form her position as a nurse practitioner and didn't resume employment for over three years, about fifteen months before she started being mean to her parents and when I say mean I mean truly nasty and horrible.
There was a lot of psychological pressure and nastiness from my niece towards her mother and father unfortunately the police couldn't help, there was no proof. I supported my sister and brother-in-law as best I could and then suddenly one day in October'23, my niece moved out of the house while my brother-in-law was in hospital. There was no explanation beforehand, we didn't know about it until the removal men arrived on the Saturday morning and there they were, gone! not a word spoken. My brother-in-law returned from hospital in early November but was quickly readmitted and he died six weeks later on Christmas day.
The problem that I have, is that the land, all of it, the three plots, are owned 50:50 between my niece and I. You will understand that my niece is of opinion that the house belongs to her, the house that her mother currently lives in, that I built with finance from my sister. In 2013/14 that is how we imagined it to be once my sister had passed away but my sister doesn't want that to happen now and is immensely concerned that she could be forced to move at a moment's notice, all my sister's money is tied up in the build, she has no other money apart from her state pension.
I am of the opinion, to counter my niece, that since I have built both houses, without fiance from my niece on my land then I own both houses and that my niece could call on ownership of the third plot being passed to her and then I have to come to terms with her to purchase half the land value of the plot that my sister's house is sat on. If we can do that then I can pass the legal ownership of my sisters house to my sister.
Of course, I will have to seek legal advice and assistance in undertaking this but I need to know what is the way forward .............. most certainly I will not be able to appease my niece in doing the right thing!
I have a niece, my sisters' daughter and I have been immensely close to her for the majority of her life, whenever she needed help, I was there for her. Unfortunately, my niece has always been a “me first” type of person, an only child, spoilt rotten, extremely vindictive and controlling and truly horrible if she didn’t get her own way, this behaviour has unfortunately advanced into adult hood. She's 51 now but for the past three years she has been truly horrible to her parents, terrorizing them. It got really bad in the summer'22 that I had to report her to the police for which she hates me ....... I can live with that; I did what I thought was right.
Anyway, to the problem. In 2013, my niece approached me about a house that had recently come on the market, to see if I would be interested in purchasing it, knocking down the existing house and building three large houses on the site, one for me, one for my niece and her parents to live in together and a third to sell and share the profits. I thought this to be an excellent idea and my niece and I purchased the house/land 50:50.
The house is in the country side surrounded by green belt but I was fortunate in being able to obtain planning permission after which I designed and built two of the houses. The build of the two houses has been undertaken by me on a shoe string budget with finance coming from my sister and I on, say an 80:20 split. My niece, her family, together with my sister and brother-in-law moved into the new house, June'2018. Unfortunately, the week after moving in to the new house my niece was sacked form her position as a nurse practitioner and didn't resume employment for over three years, about fifteen months before she started being mean to her parents and when I say mean I mean truly nasty and horrible.
There was a lot of psychological pressure and nastiness from my niece towards her mother and father unfortunately the police couldn't help, there was no proof. I supported my sister and brother-in-law as best I could and then suddenly one day in October'23, my niece moved out of the house while my brother-in-law was in hospital. There was no explanation beforehand, we didn't know about it until the removal men arrived on the Saturday morning and there they were, gone! not a word spoken. My brother-in-law returned from hospital in early November but was quickly readmitted and he died six weeks later on Christmas day.
The problem that I have, is that the land, all of it, the three plots, are owned 50:50 between my niece and I. You will understand that my niece is of opinion that the house belongs to her, the house that her mother currently lives in, that I built with finance from my sister. In 2013/14 that is how we imagined it to be once my sister had passed away but my sister doesn't want that to happen now and is immensely concerned that she could be forced to move at a moment's notice, all my sister's money is tied up in the build, she has no other money apart from her state pension.
I am of the opinion, to counter my niece, that since I have built both houses, without fiance from my niece on my land then I own both houses and that my niece could call on ownership of the third plot being passed to her and then I have to come to terms with her to purchase half the land value of the plot that my sister's house is sat on. If we can do that then I can pass the legal ownership of my sisters house to my sister.
Of course, I will have to seek legal advice and assistance in undertaking this but I need to know what is the way forward .............. most certainly I will not be able to appease my niece in doing the right thing!
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