Legal Question in Real Estate Law in Virginia

Re: Should I petition the court?

First of all, like most situations, can you prove that they refused in all of this? it isoften the case that you have legal rights based upon what you saw happen, but what other people will say is another story. So I would consider emails, witneses, etc.

You might also send additional letters or emails to see if you can get them to say further what they did or did not do in the past. But you have to think carefully about what you are going to say. You do not want to provoke a denial or get them thinking about denying it.

Yes, I think it is reasonable, but you have gone about it in an unfortunate way, and trying to reconstruct it now may be difficult.

First, someone has to qualify as the executor (personal representative) under the will to handle the estate.

Second, if your parents obtained a reverse mortgage for their living expenses during their lives worth mroe than the value of the real estate, then essentially the real estate had no value (financially) to you or your brother and sister. Its net value was negative.

Third, it is not unusual when real estate (or other things) is inherited by several heirs, for one of them to buy out the others. So you would buy out the 1/3rd share of your brother and 1/3rd share ofyour sister, and take 100% ownership. This often happens when only one child is really interested in the real estate or item.

Here, you essentially bought out your brothers and sister's share, but you should have made this clear and gotten their agreement BEFORE paying the money.

In effect, it seems, they abandoned their interest in the real estate because it had a negative value.

So the only "purchase" price was the price of redeeming it and carrying the costs.

But since you did not get their agreement beforehand, you have to somehow do this retroactively, and that won't be easy.

You will probably have to sue them for "contribution" -- to pay their 1/3rd and 1/3rd of the money that you put up and when they don't as a result of that claim full ownership through the courts. This might be done through a "partition" suit which normally would result in the sale of the land, but you become the buyer. I know it sounds like a strange use of a "partition" suit.