Registering Inherated Property

Registering Your Property after Inheriting it

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Overview

When you inherit a property following the death of a parent it is important to register the property in your name at the Land Registry as soon as possible. This is especially so if the property is not already registered as it will be a better protection for you in the event of an attempted property fraud.

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Consult a Solicitor

An application for registration after inheriting an unregistered property is too complex to consider doing it yourself. You should consult a solicitor or conveyancer and pass to them the bundle of property Deeds.

If the property is registered you would still be advised to consult a solicitor if you can afford to.

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Registration at the Land Registry

Unregistered Property

The bundle of Associated Documents comprising your ownership documents will need to be sifted carefully, and those Deeds forming the chain of ownership, from the date the testator/testatrix first owned the property, back for a period of 15 clear years (i.e. to the last person owning the property beyond 15 years), should be placed in date order. These should then be examined with the intent of showing an unbroken chain of ownership from that date to the death of the tesator/testatrix. This is called the Root of Title, and a Good Root of Title will be required before you can effect registration, i.e. there must be no missing links in the chain of ownership.

It may be that one or more of the documents is missing. There could be for a legitimate reason for this, as where the property was, in the past, part of another property. In such a case the missing Deed will probably be part of the Title of that other property, and the solicitor acting for the buyer will have obtained an Acknowledgement for Production, meaning that your solicitors are entitled to obtain that Deed on loan from them, for the purpose of effecting your registration.

The type of Deeds forming part of the root of title will typically include conveyances, transfers, mortgages, assents, powers of attorney, and the like. These documents are then bundled together and a List of Documents prepared. If this has already been done in the past there may be an Abstract of Title showing the Root.

Your solicitor will also need to check that there are valid Official Searches and/or Bankruptcy Searches confirming that the Root of Title owners had an unfettered right to own the property, i.e. that they were not bankrupt or lacking capacity in any other way. The Official Search is obtained from the Land Charges Department and will state whether any of the previous owners back to 1925 have a mortgage outstanding on the property.

Your solicitor will then prepare the Transfer Deed or Assent.

The following documents will then be sent to the Land Registry:

• Deed of Transfer in form TR1, or Assent in form AS1
• List of documents, including those forming the Root of Title
• An application to register in form FR1
• Official Search from the Land Charges Department in Portsmouth
• An official copy of the Grant of Probate or Letters of Administration
• Stamp Duty Land Tax Self Certificate, even if no Stamp Duty is to be paid
• A cheque for the Land Registration fee

If you would like the original Deeds to be returned to you it is important that you instruct your solicitor to ask for them to be returned. Otherwise they will be destroyed by the Land Registry following registration.

Registered Property

Re-registration of an already registered property is much less complex. You will need an up to date copy of the Title Register to ensure that the details you complete on the Transfer or Assent are correct.

The following documents should be sent to the Land Registry:

• Deed of Transfer in form TR1, or Assent in form AS1
• An application to register in form AP1
• An official copy of the Grant of Probate or Letters of Administration
• A Stamp Duty Land Tax Self Certificate, even if no Stamp Duty is to be paid
• A cheque for the Land Registration fee.

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Check Registration is Properly Completed

It may take a few months for registration to be completed. It would be a prudent step to make a diary note to obtain a further copy of the Title Register and Title Plan after about 3 months, in order to check that the re-registered entries are correct, particularly in relation to your name and address, the property address and the tenure and class of title.