Mother Was Left A Life Estate To Her Father’s Land?
Her father’s will stated the land would then to go my sister and I. In 1961 my mother and sister signed the deed to sell. I never signed the deed. on 04/16/08 I have a court order stating I still retain title to the property. Mother is still alive. We all live in TEXAS. The buyer from 1961 was is trying to sell the property…however, I attached the court order to the deed…and the sale is currently stopped. My lawyer says I retain 1/2 of the property..the opposing lawyer says he does not agree with my legal position….any help or pearls of wisdom to help me with this?
Legally your mother has no right to sell the property, she only has legal tenancy for her lifetime. And you and your sister are not allowed to sell the property as long as your mother is alive. The attorney on the other side has a HUGE mountain to climb, but of course he isn’t going to tell his clients that, is he? Actually, you and your sister will own the property jointly – which means that you both have to agree to sell the property when the time comes.
The law is on your side, trust your attorney.
Ok. Life estate means that the ownership interest has passed to your sister and you, each to one half; and your mother has the right to live there as long as she lives, or untill she deeds out her interest; she must sign on any encumberances of the property, and must sign a deed to terminate her interest, or die. SO: if they signed a deed to sell, they have conveyed your sister’s 1/2 and your mother’s life estate out; leaving you with a 1/2 itnerest
Not very difficult; you’ll sell, or not; and they can try and get a partition suit in place to force you to sell; but untill then, you have 1/2
Trust your lawyer. You own 1/2 the land as long as you never signed anything. When your mom dies the land will go to you and your sister this other “buyer” will have no claim to your 1/2 but if he paid anything could sue your sister for her 1/2
One single pearl of wisdom….
You have an attorney, and a viable claim to half the property, now wait until the court settles the matter.
If you are not happy with the outcome—appeal
You have a claim against the title of the land. It will have to be settled before the land is sold.
Of course the opposing lawyer doesn’t agree! Duh!
You already have some sound answers here. One point of interest would be to see the paperwork involved in this transaction between your mother and sister and this other buyer. Where were you in 1961? Did you have no idea about what was happening?
Did they fraudulently try to sell the entire property without your knowledge or did they honestly represent the fact that they only had the rights to sell half the land?
If all your stated facts are correct and you never signed or verbally agreed to anything involving the previous sale, you will eventually be awarded the ownership of your half of the property.
However there are other possible issues. How much property was there? Who determines which “half” should be yours and which “half” should be someone else’s? Might there be a substantial difference in the value of one half verse another? For example one half might have a house on it while the other half does not. One half might render neither half with the required amount of road frontage to develop. We could go on and on, but the point is, many of these things would have been taken into consideration when it came time to properly distribute the property between you and your sister. Unfortunately, that time never came as it sounds like your mother and sister tried to cheat you out of your rightful 50%.