Angela Brown

Daniels LLP Solicitors OUR parents have died and left their house to the four children. It’s been over a year now, and three of us want to rent the house out while the fourth wants to sell it. What happens in this situation? WHERE a house is jointly owned – as your parents’ house is now – and one of the joint owners wants to sell, the presumption previously was that the house must be sold. But now the executors should consult the beneficiaries and if no agreement can be reached they should follow the wishes of the majority. The fourth could apply to court if he or she feels the executors are acting unfairly. The other three will probably be able to buy out the fourth’s share at the market rate if they so wish. Get a solicitor involved. WE have lived in this house for 42 years. I was the only one to sign the purchase documents and we have also misplaced the deeds. What sort of problems will this cause when one of us dies? YOU didn’t give me your address, so I can’t tell whether your house is registered at the Land Registry. Compulsory registration was introduced in central Manchester in 1961, but the suburbs didn’t catch up until 1974. You, or your solicitor, can quickly check whether or not your house is registered online at the Land Registry website. If it is registered then it won’t matter much that you have lost the title deeds; if it’s unregistered and you have to prove that you own it, it will cause delay and unnecessary expense if you need to sell it. You should consider voluntary registration: it’s not expensive, and you should also make wills if you haven’t already done so. THE fence between our garden and our neighbour’s is falling down. We offered to go halves with the neighbour on replacing it, but he blankly refused. Are we within our rights to take the fence down, since it’s in a dangerous condition? WHO put the fence up in the first place? If your neighbour did (even if it’s on the boundary, and therefore a ‘shared’ fence) he may claim that he owns it. So if you take it down he may accuse you of criminal damage, and/ or insist you replace it at your own expense. If it’s in the condition you describe you can probably get round this by taking photos showing it was worthless. If you put the fence up, or don’t know who put the fence up, and there’s nothing in your title deeds (you should check this) obliging you to maintain a fence, you don’t need to replace it. WHAT can we do about someone who is selling vehicles outside our house, on a residential street? None of the authorities seem to want to take any action. IF your road is being used as a car showroom the police should take action. Under the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005 it’s an offence to have two or more motor vehicles parked within 500 metres of each other on a road where they are exposed or advertised for sale. If the cars aren’t actually advertised as for sale it’s more difficult, although trading standards might be interested in someone posing as a private seller who is in fact a dealer. Citizens Advice may be able to help you with this. You could point out to the seller’s potential customers that they have very few legal rights if they buy a car from him.

Call SAS Daniels LLP Solicitors on 0161 475 7676 or 01625 442 100. Visit www.sasdaniels. co.uk. If you have any legal questions write to Weekly Law and You, MEN Media, Mitchell leave your query on the legal advice line 0117 964 4794.