I know that these questions have been asked before but no clear answer given, so, as we have just looked at our options I thought I would post the facts of what are the next steps.
So firstly, unfortunately our father died last year of cancer having fought the disease for a couple of years. Both he and my mother own an apartment in Calis in joint names. Obviously with his death we had many things to deal with and dealing with the legals of the apartment ownership was not high on this list until now.
Following a visit over there last week, my mother and brother visited a solicitor to look at options. Effectively it came down to 3 choices.
1. Do nothing and then deal with the legalities of the Tapu when the surviving owner dies. In Turkish law ownership passes to children so it will be for them to resolve including payment of any fines (see my later comments)
2. Under Turkish law the children and the surviving partner inherit the deceased share (50%) and will divide it equally amongst them. To do this they will need to employ the services of a solicitor, notary for each partner and pay sales tax on the 50% share based on the amount on the TAPU (not the current Market value). All in all this added up to about £2,500 for our situation and would take about 2 months.
3. This option is the same as 2 above but involved the children inheriting the whole property by effectively buying out the surviving partner, an option that should be considered if you want to remove the need to go through option 2 again when the surviving partner also passes away. All rules are the same as number 2 above but the total cost for us was nearer £3000.
What was also clear is that there is also a law in Turkey in that if you do not inform of a death of a property owner within 3 months then you are liable to a 80TL fine (each) for the surviving owner AND any children. So I our case as there is our mother and 3 children we will each be fined 80TL. Also you need to be aware that, subject to TAPU value, inheritance tax may be due - not in our case though due to number fo children (3) and TAPU value
I hope this helps people who are faced or worried about being faced with the above situation in the future. We feel it is not anywhere near as bad process as we feared.
Steve