Jon:
Margaret in Ringwood, good morning Margaret.
Margaret:
Good morning, Jon and David. I have a little problem. My husband died 21 years ago. We held the property as joint proprietors for our life, then it went to tenants in common upon the death of my husband and I have a life tenancy over his share. Now, I’ve done improvements to the property which total now about $105,000.
Jon:
Over how many years?
Margaret:
21.
DW:
Yes.
Jon:
So that’s over a very long period of time then.
Margaret:
Yes. I’ve had the paving done around the swimming pool because the concrete was all breaking up, the kitchen remodelled, the laundry, parquetry floor, all things that will improve the property sort of long term.
I’m just wondering, when I die and my children and his children sell the property, am I able to get half of the costs of the renovations and improvements from their share?
DW:
No.
Margaret:
Oh okay.
DW:
I guess what’s happened is this. There is no fund on your late husband’s side that can pay or contribute to these costs. So it’s a life interest to Margaret and the Will will probably say what you’re required to do. Will probably imposes an obligation to repair. That doesn’t mean improve. It just means repair and an obligation to insure will probably be there.
If you choose to make improvements to the property then the answer would be they’re at your cost and at your risk. Although I should also tell you that if you’re going to do anything substantial, as a matter of logic you need the permission of the executor of your late husband’s estate to do the work.
Margaret:
Which is me and my stepson. As my husband always said if you think you’ve got a happy family, throw a will in the middle of the floor and that’s exactly what’s happened.
DW:
But where you’re at at the moment. I mean you could force the sale of the property. There’s lots of things you could do. But you can’t insist upon them contributing to the cost of improvement works that you think enhance the value of the property.
Margaret:
Right.
Jon:
Margaret, have you tried having some sort of mediation, because professional mediators deal with these issues every day of the week and are often much more successful at bringing people together than the alternative of litigating.
Margaret:
It took us two years of mediation to get them to even put some money that he had that was sitting in a bank account doing nothing into an investment fund of which I get the interest, but they will ultimately get.
Jon:
But you did get there in the end would be my response. It’s maybe it’s worth just picking up where that ended up and saying can we just keep that process and give it another burst.
Margaret:
Right.
DW:
Or indeed can we put the money in the fund into the property.
Jon:
Good luck with that, Margaret. I hope you’re able to resolve things it’s not the sort of worry anybody needs at the third age of life.