Family of deceased tenant refused entry to property containing life’s work

The surviving family of a social housing tenant who recently passed away warn they may never get access to his life’s creations because none of them has been allowed to enter his flat due to a bureaucratic rule.

Cambridge city council has refused to allow Hutchinson’s two daughters to get into the house before getting an official grant of probate in August this year, Glen Hutchinson, a performance poet, was found dead at his home.

Grant of probate establishes that an applicant is legally entitled to deal with the property of the deceased and is necessary where the person who has died had extensive property. Applications can take up to 16 weeks but the family has been told that within a month the council will clear the property if the paperwork is not presented.

“We have a key but the door’s now boarded up,” Ailsa Mackenzie his daughter said. “Due to being unable to go in and physically remove the man’s bank statements and utility bills, we cannot close his accounts and inform officials. My father relied on benefits as source of income and his remaining assets are what you can see belonging as they are meaningful to us but of no economic use to anybody else.”

Mackenzie and her sister have presented birth certificates and identity documents showing that they are the next of kin but have claimed that the Cambridge council turned down the documents.

The family expects that poets and photographs collected by Hutchinson and Hutchinson’s work will be taken by contractors before the family gains entry due to the state of the premises. They have been told by the council that the contents of the flat will have to be stored in a garage if it secure and hygienic.

Mackenzie said: “My father had PTSD and mobility problems which means he couldn’t work and even maintain the cleanliness of his flat.”

‘It was something he was doing,’ wrote the people who have spent time with him. Now, we all search for his poetry archive and his journals for safe keeping whereas in the eyes od the council operatives who have come to clear his flat, they are just papers… In the recent “safe and sanitary” request they will simply discard everything.

“Even if all his belongings are stored, we’re unlikely to be able to find what we need when everything’s been jumbled together and dumped in a garage. We have asked to be allowed to take one hour under the supervision of the council if necessary to collect items of sentimental value before it gets worse, but they refuse to listen.”

The officials of Cambridge city council said that all of Hutchinson’s belongings would be guarded until he received his probate, the endowment.

They added: “This is a stressful period for the family, and the council would wish it to be as easy as possible to recover the property of their kin member. But since the late tenant had no will, and he also failed to disclose his next of kin to the council, the law demands that an application for grant of representation is tendered to the council before anyone can deal with the estate. Identification doesn’t meet this legal obligation when given.”

Well, as it seems unlikely that relatives should be locked out of a property due to probate, Ian Bond of the Law Society’s wills and equity committee cannot agree more.

“Many local authorities permit those who can apply for the grant of probate to deal with the clearance and to search for papers without the grant, as was the case,” he said.“In this case, the local authority would know that the tenant was a long-standing claimant of benefits and hence, would be unlikely to have assets exceeding the £5,000 threshold for which probate is required.”

Mackenzie thinks that the father should have drawn a will had he thought that his family would encounter such problems with their estate.

“People picking up his things when he has been dismissed by the liverpool council and taking them to a garage or putting them in a bin is insulting to our father and cruel to us,” she said. “It is compounding on the hardship essentially making it more painful and awful.”

A week ago, through a letter from the probate office, they got an indication that their application had been granted to the sisters.

Cambridge city council was still refusing to grant the family an entry point to the building but upon pressure from the Guardian it stated it would not dispose any properties inside the building for the time they waited on the certificate.