We inherited it together and we cannot agree

It is rarely really about the property. It is about who did the caring, who was closer, and things said a long time ago. Knowing that matters, because it tells you the legal route alone will not settle it. Here is how the machinery works anyway, and what usually gets people unstuck.

Why can nobody do anything?

Because when several people inherit a property together, in most systems none of them can sell it alone. Each one holds a share, and a buyer needs all of the shares. So a single person refusing, or simply not replying, is enough to stop everything indefinitely.

That is the ordinary case, and it explains most of the paralysis. But there are two other things that freeze inherited property and they are worth ruling out first, because the answer is completely different.

The first is that the estate was never properly administered. If nobody ever took out the grant, or the grant was limited, the property may still legally sit in the estate rather than with the heirs. In that case the people arguing may not own it yet at all, and the question is who has authority to act rather than who agrees.

The second is that the title was never updated after an earlier death. This is extremely common with property abroad. The register still shows a grandparent who died in the nineties, and before anything can move, two or three generations of succession have to be proved. Families spend years arguing about a sale that could not have happened anyway.

Find out whose name is actually on the register today. Everything else follows from that.

Can one of us force a sale?

In England and Wales, often yes. Where property is held by more than one person it is held on trust, and under section 14 of the Trusts of Land and Appointment of Trustees Act 1996 a person with an interest can apply to the court for an order, including an order for sale.

The court does not simply grant it. Section 15 of the same Act sets out what it must consider, including the intentions of whoever created the trust, the purposes for which the property is held, the welfare of any child who occupies the property or might reasonably be expected to occupy it as their home, and the interests of any secured creditor. Where the dispute is about occupation, it also considers the circumstances and wishes of the beneficiaries entitled to occupy, and in other cases the wishes of the beneficiaries of full age, or the majority of them measured by the value of their combined interests.

So a sibling living in the house with young children is in a materially stronger position than one living there alone, and that is by design.

Abroad it varies enormously. Many systems have a partition procedure that allows a co-owner to force either a physical division or a sale. Others make it far harder. It is one of the first things to establish, because it changes everybody's negotiating position before a word is exchanged.

One of them is living in it rent free. Is that allowed?

It happens constantly and it is the single biggest source of resentment in these situations.

The general position in England and Wales is that a co-owner is entitled to occupy, so simply living there is not wrongful. But where one co-owner is in occupation and the others are excluded, the court can order a payment, often called an occupation rent, to balance it. It is not automatic and it depends heavily on the circumstances, including whether the others were excluded or simply chose not to live there, and who has been paying the mortgage, the insurance and the repairs.

That last point cuts both ways and is worth being honest about. The person living there is often also the person who has been maintaining the property, paying the bills, and dealing with it for years. A claim for occupation rent frequently meets a counter claim for the money they have put in.

The practical value of knowing this is not usually litigation. It is that it puts a number on something that has been an unspoken grievance, and a number can be negotiated in a way that a grievance cannot.

What are the actual ways out?

There are four, and almost every one of these situations ends in one of them.

One heir buys out the others. This is the cleanest and it keeps the property in the family. It needs an independent valuation that everybody accepts before anybody argues about the price, and it usually needs the buyer to raise money, which is its own obstacle.

It is sold and the proceeds are divided. Emotionally hardest, practically simplest. Worth remembering that a property sold in an orderly way with everybody cooperating fetches materially more than one sold under a court order, which is an argument for agreeing.

It is physically divided, where that is possible. Rare with a single house, realistic with land, and available as a formal procedure in some countries.

It is kept and the income is shared under a written agreement. This is the option people forget. If nobody needs the money urgently, a proper agreement covering who manages it, how costs are met, how income is split, and what happens when one of you wants out, converts a permanent argument into an arrangement. The reason it fails is almost always that it was never written down.

Should we go to court?

Last. Not never, but last.

Court is slow, it is expensive, and in property disputes the costs regularly consume a meaningful share of what the property is worth. It also ends the relationships, permanently, in a way that people underestimate while they are angry.

Mediation resolves these far more often than most people expect and costs a fraction. It works here specifically because the real dispute is usually not legal. A mediator can deal with the thing nobody will say out loud, which is that one of you looked after the parent and the others did not, and a judge cannot.

There is one situation where going to court early is the right call: where one party will not engage at all. A person who does not reply cannot be mediated with, and an application is sometimes the only thing that produces a response. Even then, many of those settle before a hearing.

If you are abroad, weigh it harder still. Litigation in another country, in another language, with you not present, is an expensive way to be slowly disappointed.

How do we value it when nobody trusts anybody?

Agree the method before you get the number. That single move prevents most valuation arguments.

What works is picking the valuer jointly, or each side picking one and agreeing in advance to take the midpoint, or agreeing in advance to be bound by a third valuer if the first two are far apart. What does not work is one side producing a valuation and presenting it to the others, because it will be rejected on principle regardless of whether it is accurate.

Use somebody independent of any estate agent who might get the sale. An agent's appraisal is a marketing document and everybody knows it.

Abroad, ask specifically whether the figure is a market value or a tax value. In several countries the official or registered value used for transfer tax is far below what the property would actually fetch, and families negotiate against the wrong number for months without realising the two things are different.

What if some of us are abroad and cannot travel?

This is usually solvable and it is rarely the real obstacle, though it gets blamed for a lot of delay.

Most transactions can be handled by appointing somebody locally to act, through a power of attorney. The document normally has to be drawn up in a form the destination country accepts, signed in front of a notary, and then legalised or apostilled, and often translated by an approved translator. It takes weeks rather than days and it needs to be set up before it is needed rather than in the middle of a transaction.

Be careful about scope. A power of attorney wide enough to sell property is a serious document to hand anybody, and the person you give it to is frequently one of the other heirs. Limiting it to a specific transaction, with a time limit, is normal and sensible and is not an insult.

Courts in several countries now allow remote attendance for some hearings, so "I cannot travel" is a weaker reason for delay than it once was, and the other side will point that out.

How long does this take, honestly?

If everybody agrees and the title is clean, a sale or a buyout runs on a normal timetable for that country. Weeks to a few months.

If the title needs correcting because an earlier death was never dealt with, add months and sometimes years, because you are proving events that may have happened decades ago with documents held in archives.

If somebody will not engage, the clock is set by whatever legal process exists there, and in some countries that is measured in years rather than months.

The thing worth knowing is that the cost of waiting is not zero. Empty property deteriorates, insurance on an unoccupied building is expensive or unavailable, someone keeps paying the charges, and in some places long occupation by one party starts to create rights of its own. Families who wait for everybody to feel ready usually find the asset is worth less when they finally act.

The first step is always the same and it is small: establish whose name is on the register today, and whether the estate was ever properly administered. Until you know that, nobody in the argument knows what they are arguing about.

Last reviewed 2026-09-17. This page explains how things usually work so you know what to ask. It is not legal, tax or religious advice, and nothing on it is a recommendation. Where it names an Act of Parliament it describes the general position in England and Wales only; Scotland and Northern Ireland differ, and so does every country abroad. TRADhEiR makes introductions to independent firms. We are not a firm of solicitors, we are not registered with the Immigration Advice Authority, and we hold no financial services permissions. The firm you choose does the work and is accountable for it. This site uses cookieless analytics that counts visits but does not identify you or follow you anywhere else.