My sister bought a house with our father. Does she inherit the whole property?

A parent dies and leaves three children behind.

You would probably expect whatever they owned to form part of their estate and eventually be dealt with under their will, or divided according to the intestacy rules if there is no will.

But property ownership does not always work that neatly.

A recent case we worked on involved a father who sold the family home whilst he was still alive, and bought another property with one of his daughters. The new house cost around £400,000. His daughter reportedly contributed £15,000 towards the deposit, while her father contributed around £150,000.

When he died two years later, his other children discovered that the property had been purchased in both names.

Their concern was understandable. Could their sister now end up with the house, despite contributing a relatively small amount towards buying it?

The answer is: potentially. But having two names on the title does not, on its own, tell you everything you need to know.

The first question is how the property was owned

When two people own a property together in England and Wales, they will generally own it either as joint tenants or tenants in common.

The difference becomes extremely important when somebody dies.

If the father and daughter owned the property as joint tenants, the father’s interest would normally pass automatically to the surviving owner.

That happens through what is known as “the right of survivorship”.

It means his interest in the property would not normally pass under his will. Even if the will said that his estate should be divided equally between his three children, the jointly owned property could sit outside that arrangement.

If they owned the property as tenants in common, the position is different.

Each owner has a separate beneficial share. The father’s share can then pass under his will or, if there is no valid will, under the intestacy rules.

That is why one of the first things a family in this position should establish is exactly how the property was held.

A copy of the Land Registry title is a useful starting point. The proprietorship register will usually tell you this information.

A £15,000 deposit does not necessarily mean a £15,000 share

This is where these cases can become complicated.

Families often assume that ownership should simply reflect how much each person paid towards the property.

It does not necessarily work that way.

There may have been an agreement about how the beneficial ownership was to be divided. A Declaration of Trust may have been prepared setting out, for example, that one person owned a particular percentage and the other owned the balance.

There may also be evidence in the conveyancing paperwork showing what everybody intended when the property was purchased.

So the fact that one person contributed £15,000 and another contributed £150,000 is clearly relevant, but it does not by itself establish who was legally entitled to what.

You need to see the documents.

Find the will, if there is one

The next question is what the father intended to happen to his estate.

If there is a will, it should be reviewed alongside the ownership arrangements for the house.

If it was prepared professionally, there may also be a solicitor’s file containing notes about what the father was trying to achieve and what advice he received.

That could be particularly important if the move was deliberately arranged so that the daughter could remain in the property after his death.

There is nothing inherently unlawful about a parent deciding to provide differently for one child.

Something can feel unfair to the rest of a family without automatically being legally invalid.

The real question is whether the arrangements accurately reflected the father’s intentions and whether he understood what he was agreeing to.

If there is no will, the estate will instead need to be dealt with under the intestacy rules.

Again, however, assets passing automatically outside the estate may need to be considered separately.

What happened to the proceeds from the previous house?

This is another part families sometimes overlook.

If somebody sells a larger family home, puts part of the money into a smaller property and dies a couple of years later, the new house is not necessarily the whole financial picture.

There may have been money left over from the sale.

That money could still form part of the estate, depending on what happened to it.

So it is worth establishing:

• how much the previous property sold for
• who owned it
• how much was used towards the new property
• whether there was a mortgage
• who made the mortgage payments
• where any remaining sale proceeds went

What initially looks like an argument about one house can turn out to be a much wider question about how the estate was arranged.

The conveyancing file can be important

If there are genuine concerns about how the property purchase was structured, the conveyancing file may help explain what happened.

It can contain correspondence, instructions and other records produced while the property was being bought.

That may show whether the consequences of joint ownership were discussed, whether particular ownership shares were agreed and whether a Declaration of Trust was prepared.

In a straightforward purchase, most people never need to look at this paperwork again.

After somebody dies, it can become extremely important.

What if the parent was already unwell?

Ill health does not automatically mean somebody lacked the ability to make decisions about their property.

But where a major transaction took place while someone was seriously unwell or vulnerable, questions about mental capacity may need to be considered.

That does not mean assuming something improper happened.

It means establishing whether the person understood the nature and consequences of what they were doing at the time.

Where there is a genuine concern, a solicitor may consider the surrounding evidence, including the professional files and, where appropriate, medical records.

There may also be questions about whether the legal advice given at the time was adequate and whether the person’s instructions were properly carried out.

Those are specialist issues and should be approached carefully, always with the appropriate professional advice.

When different family members remember things differently

This is where these cases become particularly difficult, because the legal position is only one part of what is going on.

The daughter who lived with her father may have seen the house as her home and the arrangement as something he deliberately put in place to make sure she was secure after his death. Her siblings may see exactly the same arrangement very differently, particularly if they had always understood that their father’s estate would eventually be shared between them.

By the time those two versions of events come into conflict, the family is often already grieving. Questions about deposits, ownership and inheritance can quickly become questions about what their parents intended, what was said privately and whether one person was treated differently from everyone else.

That is why it is worth establishing the facts before assuming the worst of each other.

Start with how the property was owned, then look at the will, any Declaration of Trust, the conveyancing file and what happened to the proceeds from the previous home. Those documents may not resolve every disagreement, but they can at least separate what is known from what the family suspects happened.

If there is still a dispute after that, specialist legal advice may be needed. But going into that process with the paperwork understood is very different from starting with accusations and trying to work backwards.

When an inherited property becomes complicated

At Augusta, we deal with inherited properties every day, including situations where ownership, probate or disagreements between family members have made a sale much harder than anyone expected.

Sometimes the problem is the title. Sometimes beneficiaries cannot agree. Sometimes paperwork is missing or an ownership issue only appears after somebody has died.

None of that automatically makes a property unsellable.

It does mean the situation needs to be understood properly before anyone starts making decisions about what should happen next.

If you are dealing with an inherited property and the ownership is not as straightforward as you expected, we can look at the property and the practical options available to you.

Where specialist legal advice is needed, that should always come from an appropriately qualified solicitor. But when the property itself has become part of the problem, that is the part we deal with every day.