PROPERTY LAW HOW WAS HOUSE SPLIT?
MY father died 14 years ago without leaving a will. My mother is still living in their bungalow and may need to go into care soon. Am I entitled to my father’s half of the bungalow if my mother has to go into care? And how would I claim that half? YOU will need to check details of your parents’ ownership of the property. If they owned the bungalow as beneficial joint tenants – the most common type of ownership – then your father’s share will have automatically passed to your mother by survivorship when he died. So your mother will now own it outright. But if your father owned the property in his sole name, or your parents held equal shares, you may just possibly have inherited a share under the intestacy rules. If you need help with this see a solicitor.
DARK DEEDS
MANY years ago I bought a strip of land from my neighbour. The conveyance documents have now been lost, and the land has become a bone of contention: the people who now live next door claim I have poached some of their property and have deliberately planted huge conifers next to the boundary to put our house in the shade! YOUR neighbours should have a related document showing a transfer of the land to you, so they were almost certainly aware of the existing boundaries when they bought their property. There may also be some record of the transfer at the Land Registry. Even without the documents, depending on how long you have been exclusively occupying the land, you may own the land by adverse possession as long as you built a wall or a fence around it and have been exclusively occupying it for the required period. As regards the conifers, you should obtain a “high hedges” leaflet from the council to see if they might be able to intervene to prevent your house and garden being overshadowed.
LEASE EXPIRING
I OWN a small bungalow which has a 100-year lease, of which 65 years remain. It is connected to another bungalow and a small block of flats. If I paid to extend the lease and none of the other properties did, what would be the outcome when their leases ran out? IF the other leases aren’t renewed then in theory ownership of the properties will revert to the freeholder, who would then be able to sell them on. But this is unlikely to happen, since the owners of the properties will presumably want to either live in them or pass them on to their children or relatives in due course.
NON-STARTER
WHEN we moved into our house eight years ago I had over £3,000-worth of work done by a plumbing and heating contractor, including the installation of a shower unit. Recently the unit developed a leak, and when it was stripped down I found it had been patched up and was therefore second-hand, even though I’d paid for a new one. I have tried to locate the contractor without success and suspect he has ceased trading. Can I take legal action against him even though it was years ago? IT’S unlikely that a court would award anything more than minimal compensation over a unit that has lasted eight years, even if it was second-hand. If you cannot trace the plumber you won’t be able to bring a claim against him. If you can trace him and his firm has gone out of business, you are unlikely to recover money from him even if you did win your case. »»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 Henry House, Hollinwood Avenue, Chadderton OL9 8EF, or email mail@ lawQs.co.uk