Urgent advice needed re- selling my Dads home.

[Neil]

My father and his old partner has a farmhouse which is being sold and the completion date is 14th dec. My father has split with his old partner and has power of attorney to sign on her behalf. We are at the final stage of the sell and we are due to get the final mandate very soon. My father passed away last Friday and left no will either in uk or France. Me and my brother and sister have been advised that we must provide death certificate , passports, marridge certificates and a certificate of heredity. The only certificate of heredity i can apply for is something called "letter of administration". Once we have these documents we have been advised that the solicitor can then replace my dad and this will allow us to complete the sell.

Is the above correct ?

[Loiseau]

Welcome to the forum, Neil.

I was once in a similar situation, in which my husband died between the signing and completion on the sale of a French cottage. Once we had provided the notaire with the necessary documents, it all proceeded ok, but it did take a month longer to reach completion, I think.

The thing is that the shareout of the property had to go strictly along French inheritance lines, with set amount going to wife and children. In your case, probably half will go to the ex-partner straight off, if she is a co-owner; the rest being divided between you and the rest of your father's children.

One potentially tricky thing was that the French notaire wanted to write to our UK solicitor to check how many children my husband had. We pointed out that we had only become a client of that solicitor very recently, in the context of making UK wills, and there was no way he would have had any idea how many children either of us had. The notaire accepted that, provided we could rustle up a local French friend to swear that to the best of his knowledge my husband had no other children likely to pop outnof the woodwork. Not that there was any way even our friend could have been sure of that, but it did provide the notaire with a signature on the appropriate pice of paper.

Hope it goes smoothly for you.

Angela