What to Do When One Sibling Refuses to Sell Inherited Property

One sibling wants the money released. Another won’t discuss it, won’t sign and won’t answer the phone. Meanwhile the house sits empty, costing the estate money every month it stays that way.

Here’s the honest answer to the question you came here with. Yes, a co-owner can usually force the sale of an inherited property by applying to court for an order for sale under the Trusts of Land and Appointment of Trustees Act 1996. It isn’t automatic, it isn’t quick, and the judge has discretion to refuse.

It’s also the last step in a sequence, not the first. We buy over 500 properties a year across England and Wales, plenty of them probate sales with several beneficiaries, and almost every deadlock I’ve watched play out ended long before a courtroom.

The order that works:

• Work out whether you legally own the property yet
• Read the title register so you know what kind of co-owner you are
• Find out why they’re really refusing
• Get an independent valuation, then price what the delay is costing
• Mediate
• Send a letter before action
• Issue a TOLATA claim

Skipping to the last line is how a six-month problem becomes a two-year one.

Step one: do you actually own it yet?

Most people asking this question don’t.

“We inherited it, so we can sell it” is the commonest misconception in this whole area. Until the grant of probate is issued and the property is assented (formally transferred) to the beneficiaries, no sibling has legal title to sell. The estate owns it and the personal representatives control it.

That changes who your problem is. If probate isn’t through, the person blocking you is an executor rather than a co-owner, and an order for sale is the wrong tool entirely.

So get probate moving. It’s the highest-leverage thing available while the argument rumbles on. HMCTS reported average waits of around 4.3 weeks for digital applications and around 16 weeks for paper ones in its June 2026 update for probate firms, so how the application is submitted matters.

We bought one probate property where the grant hadn’t been issued yet. While it was going through, we surveyed the house, paid for the searches and dealt with all the enquiries.

When probate completed, we purchased within 48 hours.

The grant is nearly always the bottleneck. Everything else can run alongside it.

When the executor sibling is the blocker

If the person stalling is the executor, the remedy is removal, not a forced sale.

A beneficiary or fellow executor can apply under section 116 of the Senior Courts Act 1981 (before a grant is taken out) or section 50 of the Administration of Justice Act 1985 (before or after it). The court looks at the welfare of the beneficiaries and whether the estate is being properly administered.

Being at war with your brother isn’t enough on its own: Haynes v Andre requires a material risk that the hostility will damage the administration. Real deadlock is different. In Nwosu v Nwosu the court removed the executors and appointed an independent third party where a straightforward estate had been stuck for over five years (The Gazette).

Cost depends entirely on whether it’s fought. By consent, removal can be dealt with on the papers for very little. Contested, it runs to many tens of thousands.

Then read the title register

An official copy of the register costs £3 online from HM Land Registry, or £7 if you apply by post. Get it before you take advice, because it decides your options.

• Joint tenants: no defined shares, and a right of survivorship. Everybody has to consent to a sale.
• Tenants in common: defined shares, often unequal where step or half siblings are involved, and each share is a separate asset.

If you’re joint tenants and want a defined share of your own, you can sever the joint tenancy by written notice. You don’t need anyone’s agreement. Serve the notice, then apply for a Form A restriction using Form SEV, for which there’s no Land Registry fee.

Rare, but worth checking: an inherited home that never had a mortgage may never have been registered. A solicitor can register it as part of the sale using an epitome of title (a summary of the deeds proving ownership history). If you’ll be selling under a power of attorney, register it before going to market.

Find out why they’re actually refusing

Your legal position is useless until you know what you’re negotiating against.

Most readers arrive convinced their sibling is being greedy. In my experience greed is rare. It’s nearly always one of three things:

• Money. They can’t afford anywhere else, or can’t fund a buy-out.
• Practicalities. They live there, or clearing 40 years of a parent’s belongings feels impossible.
• Grief. It’s still Mum’s house and they aren’t ready.

Each has a different fix, and reaching for the wrong one hardens the position. You can’t solve grief with a solicitor’s letter.

Whichever it is, get an independent written valuation before anyone discusses price. Almost every deadlock I see is an argument about a number nobody has actually obtained.

And when two people won’t speak to each other, stop forcing joint conversations. On sales like that we speak to each party separately and keep communications through the solicitors separate too. Everyone still gets the same information and the same timescales, and nobody controls what the other one hears.

The clearest deadlock I’ve dealt with was a divorce sale where the wife’s mother held a legal charge over the property and refused to release it until her share had been agreed. One veto, whole sale stopped. It ended when the couple agreed a figure with her, and we completed.

Not a court order. A number, agreed.

What the standoff costs every month

Once you have a valuation, the other number that shifts people is what the argument is taking out of the estate.

An empty inherited house costs roughly £300 to £400 a month to hold. Utilities, heating through winter to keep damp off, security checks and unoccupied property insurance. Council tax does stop for a while after a death, and that’s the relief families lean on for too long.

The Class F exemption means no council tax while the property is unoccupied because the liable person died, running until probate is granted and for up to six months afterwards. It applies even if the house is still furnished. After that a full bill resumes, falling on the estate (so on the executor) or on the sibling who has inherited.

Then it gets worse:

• Most English councils charge an empty homes premium: an extra 100% after one year empty and unfurnished, 200% after five years, 300% after ten.
• England allows two exceptions: 12 months after the grant of probate where Class F applied, and a further 12 months while the property is actively marketed for sale or let.
• Wales runs its own separate set of exceptions to the premium, so check the position with the council there rather than assuming the English rules apply.

Source: House of Commons Library, Is council tax payable on an empty house when someone dies?

Insurance is the other trap. Standard policies often stop covering a property after 30 to 60 days empty (Kings Court Trust), so tell the insurer straight away and arrange unoccupied cover. Around 20% of the properties offered to us have damp flagged on the survey, and cold, empty rooms are exactly how that starts.

One seller came to us with an inherited three-bed mid-terrace in the Midlands that had stood empty for eight months while council tax, insurance, utilities and clearance costs mounted up. We exchanged within a week and completed 28 days later, which stopped the bleeding.

The deadlines that don’t wait for your family to agree

Three dates run regardless of whether anyone is speaking.

• Inheritance tax is due six months after the end of the month of death. Interest runs from then, at HMRC’s late-payment rate, which has been set at the Bank of England base rate plus four percentage points since 6 April 2025. It moves every time the base rate moves, so check the current figure before you budget for it (HMRC).
• Capital gains tax on a UK residential property disposal usually has to be reported and paid within 60 days of completion through the CGT on UK Property account (LITRG).
• A deed of variation under section 142 IHTA 1984 lets beneficiaries redirect an inheritance (one takes the house, the others take cash), but only within two years of the date of death.

CGT is the one that punishes delay, because the delay creates the bill. Your base cost is the probate value, so a prompt sale often produces little or no gain. Two years of growth in a rising market manufactures a taxable one, charged at 18% or 24% depending on your income, with a £3,000 annual exempt amount to set against it.

The deals that end this without a judge

Most of these disputes finish in an agreement, so it helps to know what the agreements look like.

The buy-out. One sibling keeps the house and pays the others out, usually by raising a mortgage. A £300,000 house split three ways is £100,000 each. Two flags: the siblings selling their shares can face CGT on the gain since probate value, and the buying sibling may owe stamp duty land tax on what they pay, including the 5% additional property surcharge in England if they already own a home. In Wales the equivalent is land transaction tax, which taxes additional properties under a separate set of higher rates rather than adding a flat surcharge, so check the current bands on gov.wales.

Letting it out. If nobody needs the capital immediately, a tenant turns a monthly loss into a split income and stops the empty homes premium clock, because an occupied house isn’t an empty one.

Whatever you land on, have a solicitor draft it. Verbal family agreements collapse the moment somebody’s circumstances change.

Occupation rent: the lever most siblings don’t know exists

If one sibling lives there rent free while you pay the insurance, you aren’t powerless.

Under sections 12 and 13 of TOLATA a beneficiary can have a right to occupy. But trustees can exclude or restrict that occupation and impose conditions, including requiring the occupier to compensate the beneficiary who’s shut out. On a sale, courts also apply “equitable accounting” to adjust between co-owners for occupation, mortgage payments, outgoings and improvements. The modern approach, reflected in Bailey v Dixon, asks what’s fair between the parties rather than whether you were literally forced out (Financial Remedies Journal).

Keep every receipt from today. The calculation is a solicitor’s job, but telling an occupying sibling that their rent-free years get accounted for on sale changes the tone of the conversation immediately.

Mediation stopped being optional in October 2024

If a private deal won’t come together, mediation is next, and refusing it now costs you money.

In Churchill v Merthyr Tydfil County Borough Council the Court of Appeal reversed the old Halsey rule and confirmed that a court can lawfully stay proceedings for, or order, non-court dispute resolution. CPR amendments from 1 October 2024 wrote alternative dispute resolution into the overriding objective, into active case management and into the costs rules, so a party who unreasonably refuses to engage can be penalised in costs (Paul Hastings).

“I’m not going to mediation” is no longer free.

Specialist property and inheritance mediation for disputes under £1m runs around £1,600 plus VAT per party for a half day, or £2,250 plus VAT for a full day, with a 15% reduction per party in multi-party disputes (The Property Mediators).

Alongside it, a solicitor’s letter before action setting out the grounds, the remedy sought and a reasonable deadline to reply is the formal pre-action step. Often it’s the thing that restarts talks without anyone issuing a claim.

If it has to be court: the real numbers

• Issuing a non-money claim costs £387 in the county court or £663 in the High Court, with a £1,334 hearing fee on the intermediate or multi-track. Court fees are reviewed periodically, so check the current figures on the HMCTS EX50 fee list before you budget.
• Expect six to twelve months to a final hearing, and a contested claim taken to trial is likely to cost a few tens of thousands of pounds (Aaron & Partners).
• The defendant has 14 days to respond to the claim form. Conditional fee and damages-based agreements are available (capped at 50% of recovery), and most claims settle before trial.

Under section 15 of TOLATA the court weighs the intentions of the person who created the trust, the purpose the property is held for, the welfare of any child living there, and the interests of any secured creditor. It looks at conduct too, so unreasonably refusing a fair offer counts against whoever did it. There’s no guarantee either: a judge won’t order a sale simply because one sibling wants their money.

When it does order one, it has teeth. The court can order an occupying party out, hand one party sole conduct of the sale, and sign the contract itself where a sibling refuses to sign and a reasonable offer is on the table. Orders can carry a penal notice, making breach a contempt, backed by a possession order or a warrant.

So yes, you can eventually make them. The question is whether a year and a chunk of the estate beats £1,600 on a mediator.

Once they agree, pick the route that actually completes

An agreement only ends the argument when the money lands. Where trust has gone, the route matters more than the headline price.

• Estate agent. Best price, slowest, and it carries chain and fall-through risk (roughly one in five agreed sales collapses). Every wobble reopens the row.
• Auction. Genuinely good for run-down properties where a developer can see the potential and the seller accepts the risk. For a straightforward house in decent condition the reserve risk is underestimated: if the lot fails, you’ve paid for the legal pack and your guide price is public. We bought an inherited London property that failed at auction on exactly that basis, and completed within four weeks.
• Cash buyer. A fixed completion date, which is the thing that actually ends a standoff. We make an offer within 24 hours, can exchange in as little as 48 hours, typically complete in 28 days, and cover the seller’s legal fees when they use our recommended solicitor. The trade-off is price: typically 75 to 85% of open market value.

My honest rule: if there’s no time pressure, no mounting costs and everybody is now agreeable, use an estate agent and take the extra money. Around 90% of sellers who come to us tried the open market first, and for plenty of them that was the right call at the time.

Common questions

The will says the house can’t be sold for a period. Is that an absolute block?

No, but it carries weight. A will can restrict a sale for a time or give someone a right to occupy, and the court takes the purpose behind the trust seriously under section 15 of TOLATA. It turns on the exact wording, and a beneficiary can still apply under section 14 of the same Act. Have the will and any trust read by a solicitor before you assume you’re stuck.

Can I just sell my own share to somebody else?

As a tenant in common you own a distinct beneficial share you can in theory dispose of. In practice it’s close to unsaleable, because no stranger wants to co-own a house with a family in dispute. Use it as a negotiating fact, not a plan.

One sibling has serious debts. Could their creditors force a sale?

Yes. A trustee in bankruptcy, a judgment creditor with a charging order over that sibling’s beneficial interest, or a mortgagee can bring a TOLATA claim of their own (Aaron & Partners). It’s a strong reason not to leave a share sitting in limbo for years.

This article is general information about the law and tax in England and Wales, not legal or tax advice. TOLATA claims, executor removal, inheritance tax and capital gains tax all turn on your specific facts, so take advice from a solicitor or a qualified tax adviser before acting.