Two brothers

I have a client who lived with his brother for the last eight years – the brother unfortunately died last month.

They jointly owned a big house as their main residence which was converted into two flats – one brother living upstairs on his own the deceased brother lived downstairs with his 89-year old mother.

The flats were separately recognised for council tax gas and electricity purposes but the final stage of the job (to take out the staircase linking the upstairs and downstairs parts of the building) was never finalised.

This meant there was internal access throughout the whole building. The property could not at present be sold as two separate flats for legal purposes – there is one freehold property.

The recently deceased brother left his half of the property to his surviving brother.

We were anticipating a probate value of £650 000 which...