Legal Question in Real Estate Law in Illinois

Because real property is involved, any agreement you have should be in writing, so an oral agreement would have questionable enforceability. If you ask the court to divide the property, the judge will most likely want to do a partition, meaning the property would be sold and the profits from the sale divided.

An idea is to get an appraiser to evaluate the property as it was at the time you inherited it, and then each couple gets that amount of property. This way the part of the property with the house would be assessed separately. Then the property can be divided equitably and the party that has made the improvements can benefit.

This would also give you the advantage of knowing which part of the property is yours and make it easier to get the loan you need.

First who owns what. It appears you and your sister inherited from your aunt, and managed to make your respective 50% ownership interests into marital assets for each of your marriages, if not outright ownership. The way I might have papered this at the time would have been to distribute a 50% interest to each of you and your sister from your aunt's estate, and not include the husbands since they were not heirs of the estate unless the aunt had a will that explicitly included them (possible but unlikely). So first you need to verify this because how ownership is held will have an impact and if your your brother-in-law never took title he still may have accrued "equities" in the property and could have a claim to some interest in it in case they got divorced.... The second issue in that regard is that your first husband's interests were terminated by the divorce and that your current husband effective took over the position the same way; if that's not the case there could be an impact, and if it is the case and it's been going along the same way for a time, the fact that the original deal was made with your ex- may be irrelevant since enough time has passed that your current husband could be considered to have "ratified" the arrangement.

As to the underlying situation, if you did not have the property appraised when it was given to you, and then reappraised at the time it was updated, it may be difficult to reconstruct, if not costly unless you use just the receipts plus some fair number attributable to their labor. Suffice it to say that if you started down a road with them, then it may be best if you fulfill the situation as commenced because now to go backwards and start what could wind up in a lawsuit will have the effect of most likely minimizing any rental upside there may be, or if rents are less, then it may be a loss!!! It should not prevent you from agreeing with them (if possible) to get a current appraisal of fair market AND fair rental value, for the house and land separately if need be, so you have a "baseline". And as to the 2014 they may just be proposing that figuring you'll counter with perhaps 2012 or something. Impossible to say at this point.

More importantly is the obligation of your sister and brother-in-law not to "suffer waste" of the property -- they have an obligation like a tenant to keep it up, ordinary wear and tear ecepted if there are no other terms. Because if they damage it before the amount of the updating is recouped they would be 100% liable.

Finally, as to any agreement. In order to avoid enmity, it would probably be a good thing to make an agreement among you four. This could allow a number of things, including a way to divide the land for purposes of allowing you to borrow against it for your business venture. If nothing else it would set out how rent is to be handled and who pays for the taxes, insurance and expenses.

Time for you to see a lawyer with all of the facts and what you have in mind to formulate some ideas to discuss with your sister and her husband. Otherwise you could be looking at litigation and some bad feelings.

The response given is not intended to create, nor does it create an ongoing duty to respond to questions. The response does not form an attorney-client relationship, nor is it intended to be anything other than the educated opinion of the author. It should not be relied upon as legal advice. The response given is based upon the limited facts provided by the person asking the question. To the extent additional or different facts exist, the response might possibly change. Attorney is currently licensed to practice law only in the State of Illinois. Responses are based solely on Illinois law unless stated otherwise.