Solicitor’s wills error

[Dahlia50]

Parents both deceased. Mother recently. I made both probate applications which were granted. Their solicitor had advised change from joint tenants to tenants in common and drawn up appropriate wills so we thought father left his half of house to the two daughters 11 years ago. Just found out solicitor didn’t actually make the necessary change to the land registry, so house had actually reverted to mother. Fortunately still no IHT owed and in fact one daughter selling her share from father to the other daughter will not owe CGT now. What to do about probate grants applied for in good faith but based on incorrect wills’ info? And also wills sent in under wrong assumption of tenants in common?

[atticus]

I am not certain that your parents were not tenants in common. My thinking is that the joint tenancy was severed, even if the appropriate changes were not registered at Land Registry.

dslippy may know better than me.

[dslippy]

If the change was made, it was made, and does not revert for not having been registered.

[Dahlia50]

When I asked my parents’ solicitor to quote to update the title deed from my parents’ names to my sister’s he
replied that the house would have vested to our mother when our father died! Presumably he hadn’t looked at the will he’d drawn up. But he also wondered whether I needed his CGT advice, as I said I was selling my share from Dad to my sister. All v confusing.

[Dahlia50]

So would the solicitor, in making mirror wills referring to my parents as tenants in common, have felt it unnecessary to register a form A restriction?

[dslippy]

He should have registered it, but did not in the absence of clear instructions from you feel the need. It is a fairly common faiing.

[Dahlia50]

Thanks for your reply.

He was the solicitor of my parents, so there would have been no absence of clear instructions as he attended to all of their legal matters. He or a minion had carried out the conveyancing for the house in question, and the paper deeds were then lodged with his company. He later advised changing the registration to tenants in common and devised the wills accordingly. Would have been surprising if my parents had agreed that they would like to go ahead as tenants in common for the purpose of the wills, but instructed him not to make the change with the land registry. I met him when I accompanied my 84-year old mother to his office to collect my father’s original will for the probate application. I suggested that I might then apply to the land registry to remove my father’s name from the title deed and add mine and my sister’s. He said this would not be necessary. He would just put a copy of Dad’s will with the deeds. The term tenants in common was certainly used at this meeting and we were all agreed then that my sister and I had inherited half of the house. However, recently, in reply to another enquiry he stated that the ownership of the house would have reverted to my mother on my father’s death, implying that the house didn’t pass to me and my sister till she died. But in the same message he also implied that I would owe capital gains tax on the bit I’m selling to my sister. There has certainly not been an increase of more than the CGT allowance on half of the property since we inherited it in recent weeks.

[JJW]

Should it have been transferred to you and your sister with a life time interest for your mother, the mothers will shows who her half is left to or?

Are you complaining about solicitor or was his advice correct? Thank you