The local authority concerned were a making concerted effort to put many of their long-term empty properties back into use. In this case, property had stood empty for over 14 years.

After researching the title of the property we established that the owner, Mr P, died in 2003, he was one of four children and that his father was born in the UK but served in the Ecuadorian Navy.

It was during Mr C’s father’s time serving in Ecuador that he met his wife and Mr C’s mother. Working with our genealogy partners in the UK and Ecuador, we found Mr C died a bachelor without any issue and his parents both predeceased.

Two of Mr C’s siblings predeceased without any issue, leaving his one surviving sister as the only person entitled to his estate who herself sadly died in 2006.

Mr C’s surviving sister had left the UK many years ago and was living in Canada at the time of her death, but no grant of representation had been obtained to her estate.

After reviewing the case, we were able to use a lesser-known section of the non-contentious probate rules to make a successful case to the Probate Registry for a grant of letters of administration to be issued to Mr C’s estate .

Mr C’s property was unregistered, and the original title deeds could not be found. We therefore had to gather evidence in order to reconstitute the title and make an application to the Land Registry for a first registration.

Once the Land Registry had completed our application, we were able to arrange a sale of the property and the local authority were, of course, pleased to see the property put back into use.

The estate of Mr C was ultimately distributed to the beneficiaries of his late sister’s estate, who were located around various different parts of the world.

Due to the upward trend in the London property market and the passage of time from the date of Mr C’s death, the sale of the property would have attracted a substantial capital gains tax (‘CGT’) liability on the estate. However, we were able to negotiate the historical property valuations with HMRC and then transfer the property to the beneficiaries prior to sale, in order to mitigate the overall tax liability, which resulted in a saving to the estate of over £30,000.