Articles
You Inherited a House in Manitoba. Now What?
Author: Philippe Richer
A man in his fifties sat in our office with a set of keys on the table between us. His mother’s house in East Kildonan. He’d grown up in it. She’d died in April, he was the executor and one of three beneficiaries, and he had no idea what he was supposed to do with a house.
His sister wanted to sell. His brother wanted to keep it and rent it out. He wanted to be finished. The lawn needed cutting, the insurance company had sent a letter he didn’t understand, and there was a property tax bill on the counter addressed to a woman who had died.
The house was not his. It was not his sister’s or his brother’s either. It belonged to his mother’s estate, and until he understood what that meant, none of the three of them could do anything with it.
Here’s what actually happens between someone dying and someone owning.
The house doesn’t become yours when the will says so
This is the first thing to get straight, and it’s the thing that makes the rest make sense.
When someone dies, their property doesn’t jump to the beneficiaries. It sits in their estate. The executor named in the will has the job of gathering it, dealing with the debts and taxes, and then transferring what’s left to the people entitled to it.
A will is instructions to the executor. It isn’t a transfer of ownership. Nobody’s name changes on a title because a document says it should.
So if you’ve inherited a house in Manitoba, what you actually have is an entitlement to a house. Someone has a process to run before that entitlement becomes ownership. Usually the executor, and sometimes that’s you.
Meanwhile, the house is still a house. It still needs insurance, heat, taxes paid, and the grass cut. Which brings us to the part nobody warns you about.
The first two weeks
Before anything legal happens, some practical things need attention, and they need it fast.
Insurance. This is the urgent one. A homeowner’s policy on a house that’s now unoccupied usually doesn’t cover what you think it covers. Many insurers restrict or void coverage on a vacant property after a set number of days, often thirty. Call the insurer, tell them the owner has died and the house is empty, and ask what you need. There’s usually a vacancy endorsement available. A Manitoba estate that loses a house to a burst pipe in an uninsured January is a genuinely terrible thing to watch, and it’s entirely preventable with a phone call.
Utilities and heat. Don’t shut the heat off. In Manitoba that’s how you get frozen pipes, and frozen pipes in an empty house are found late.
Security. Mail piling up says the house is empty. Redirect it.
Personal assets. If everyone gets along, then distributing the china, furniture and personal belongings is fine. It may even help with the grieving process. However, if there’s a risk of conflict with siblings, it’s better to hold off. The executor may even want to have the personal belongings’ value assessed in case someone claims the china is worth something. The executor is legally responsible for the estate’s assets, and once things start walking out the door before the estate is settled, the executor is the one carrying that.
Whether you need probate
The banks and the house is usually what decides this.
In Manitoba, if the house was owned solely in the name of the person who died, the Land Titles Office will generally require a grant of probate before the title can be transferred out of the estate. That’s the mechanism. Land Titles needs to see that the court has confirmed the will and confirmed the executor’s authority before it’ll change the record on a piece of real property.
If the house was held in joint tenancy with someone still living, it’s a different story. The right of survivorship applies and the house passes to the surviving owner automatically, outside the estate and outside the will. That’s not an inheritance, it’s a survivorship, and it’s a much shorter road.
Manitoba got rid of probate fees in 2020. That helped, and it also created a persistent misunderstanding: people hear “no probate fees” and think probate went away. The process is still there. What’s gone is the bill from the province.
If probate is required, expect the whole thing — application, grant, transfer — to take months rather than weeks. Not because anyone is being slow, but because there’s a court, a Land Titles office, and a tax clearance in the chain, and each of them takes their own time.
Keep it, sell it, or rent it
Once you know the house is coming to you, the actual decision arrives. There isn’t a right answer, but there are questions that make the answer clearer.
- Is it coming to you alone, or to several of you? One beneficiary is a decision. Three beneficiaries is a negotiation, and the person in the middle is usually the executor, who is also usually one of the three. That’s a hard seat.
- Can everyone afford to keep it? Keeping a house means somebody pays the taxes, the insurance, the furnace, and the roof. “Let’s keep it” is easy to say in April and expensive by November.
- Does anyone actually want to live in it? If yes, the usual route is that person buys out the others’ shares, and the estate needs a real value to do that fairly. Get an appraisal, not an opinion from a cousin.
- Renting it out means you’re landlords together. With each other. For years. Ask honestly whether your family is built for that, because a bad tenant plus a disagreeing set of siblings is a long chapter.
- What does the tax look like? The estate deals with tax up to the date of death. After that, an inherited property that isn’t anyone’s principal residence can accumulate a taxable gain from the date of death to the date of sale. Talk to the estate’s accountant before you decide to sit on it for three years. This is one where we’ll tell you plainly that it’s the accountant’s call, not ours.
- What does the executor need to do first? Debts and taxes come before beneficiaries. If the estate owes money, the house may have to be sold to pay it, regardless of what anyone wanted.
How it went for the man with the keys
He had a real problem: a house, three opinions, and no authority yet.
We started with insurance, because it was July and the house was empty and that was the thing that could go wrong that week. Then we applied for probate, because the house was in his mother’s name alone and Land Titles wasn’t going to move without it.
While the application was in, we told him to stop negotiating with his siblings and get an appraisal. What the house was worth had been a matter of family opinion for three months, and family opinion was doing nothing but generating arguments. The appraisal came back and it was lower than the brother thought and higher than the sister thought, which is roughly what always happens.
His brother did the math on carrying a rental with two co-owners who didn’t want one and withdrew. The house sold in the fall. The three of them split it and, as far as we know, still have Christmas together.
The house was never really the problem. The problem was that three people were trying to make a decision before anyone had the authority to make it, about a number nobody knew. Get the authority and get the number, and the decision usually makes itself.
What people get wrong
“The will says it’s mine, so it’s mine.” The will tells the executor what to do. Until the estate is administered and the title is transferred, the house belongs to the estate.
“We can sell it right away and skip probate.” You can list it. You generally can’t close it, because the buyer’s lawyer needs clean title from the estate, and Land Titles wants the grant first when the house was solely owned. Selling before probate is granted is how a family ends up with an accepted offer and no way to close.
“The insurance is fine, the policy is paid up.” An unoccupied house is a different risk and most policies treat it that way. Call them. This week.
“We’ll figure out the money between ourselves.” You might. An appraisal costs a few hundred dollars and removes the single most common thing siblings fight about for a decade.
Where to start
If a house has landed in your lap this summer, the first two calls are the insurer and a lawyer, in that order if the house is empty.
Give us a call and we’ll tell you whether this estate needs probate, what the house has to do with that answer, and roughly how long you’re looking at. It’s a short conversation and it’ll tell you what kind of year you’re actually in.