Helping Mother With Estate Planning
REM #A695
By Ilyce R. Glink
Summary: A reader is concerned about what will happen to her mother's land after she passes on. She is worried that her brother will claim the land because he has been using it for his horses. Ilyce suggests the siblings and mother sit down together with an estate attorney.
Q: My mother owns 20+ acres in a neighboring county. Several years ago, my
brother and his wife fenced in the land and put horses on it and use the barn
that is on the land.
When my mother dies the land is to be divided between my brother and me.
Can my brother and his wife claim the land as theirs because they used it for
a number of years and have horses on it?
A: I don't think so. If they used the land with your mother’s permission,
they don’t have a right to claim the home as their own, according to a
real estate attorney I talked to. They also must have not only used the land
exclusively for up to 21 years without letting your mother have the use or access
to it. And they would also have had to have paid all of the expenses on the
land. You should talk to a real estate attorney to get more details.
The fact that you’re asking the question, however, makes me think you’ve
got bigger issues you have to deal with. You, your mother and your brother should
sit down and talk about this piece of property, what it is worth and what your
mother intends to do with it after she passes.
You sound like you have trust issues with your brother. If that's the case,
after your mother dies, it could be all-out war. That's a tough spot to be in.
You could lose all of your family at once.
I urge you to sit down soon and talk this through with everyone. If you’re
worried about the conversation escalating, perhaps invite an estate attorney
to sit down with you to answer everyone’s questions.
NOTE: This column is distributed by Real Estate Matters Syndicate, PO Box 366, Glencoe, Illinois, 60022. This column may not be resold, reprinted, resyndicated or redistributed without written permission from the publisher.
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