Tenants in Common vs Joint Owneship of Home

- D
- DavidM
  
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posted
16 years ago

Sun, Nov 11, 2007 2:02 PM

Earlier this year we changed our home from joint ownership to tenants in common, in anticipation of making IHT trust wills. Given the recent changes to the IHT nil rate band allowance for married couples and civil partnerships there seems little point in incurring the cost of making these wills. However are there any benefit of changing back to joint ownership (eg. simplifies things when the first spouse dies), or should I just leave it at tenants in common? Any disadvantages of leaving things as they are?

Thanks, David.

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- R
- RobertL
  
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posted
16 years ago

Thu, Nov 15, 2007 8:46 AM

Nobody replied, so I will have a stab, though I am not an expert.

If you have the house as TinC then your co-owner can leave their house to their lover in their will if they wish. If they have no valid will then the intestacy rules might give the deceaseds part of the TinC house to someone other than the survivor. if it's JT then the house passes to the survivor regardless of the will or lack of one.

With a JT either can sever the JT just by writing to the other - it does not require consent.

A death certificate is all that's needed to remove the deceased's name from the deeds. You don't have to wait for probate. This might possibly be valuable if money is tight after the first death and the house has to be sold quickly. probate can take a long time and the inheritence tax has to be paid before probate is granted. if the house is TinC is cannot be sold until after probate is granted.

I stand to be corrected and my knowledge might be out of date.

Robert

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