Legal Question in Real Estate Law in North Carolina
To make this short, my mother died mid-December in N.C. leaving her house to 5 siblings. 2 of us live out of state. One of the siblings offered to buy us out by paying ea. $10,000; 1/2 one year and the other half the next year. No one could come to an agreement so he withdrew his offer. All of a sudden he has a buyer and want the 2 out of state to sign a POA so he can sell it. He is very rude whenever questions such as who, how much the buyer has offered and how soon he thinks the house will sell. Is he required to share this information with us and does he have to have a signed "Contract to Buy & Sell Real Estate" prior to needing the POA? Once our rights have been signed over to him can he himself buy the house without our knowledge and okay? He is definitely not trustworthy on our part. Please can you help?
1 Answer from Attorneys
No - there is no reason to do this. Everyone has equal rights - he cannot sell the property without everyone's consent. There would be no reason to give consent without seeing everything. The only way to force a sale would be to bring a partition action in court.
Since your mother died recently, there may be other things that need to be done anyway before you can sell the property - an estate may need to be opened, notice to creditors may have to be published, etc.
I would not sign a power of attorney under the circumstances you described especially since you think he is untrustworthy. Tell him that everyone is equal owners and we will all share i in the decisions and we all have a right to the same information. If you were going to sell it, I would probably hire a realtor. There is also a lot of information you can get online such as the tax value, etc. A realtor could give you an idea of the market value.
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