That should be carefully worded in the Life Interest clause in the will. There must be a way to word it so the property is repaired and kept in order.
It's a recognised feature of life interests that they are not good for they property they apply to.
As a matter of law, the life tenant has a responsiblity to maintain the property in the condition in which they receive it, and to carrly out ordinary repairs and renewals — you don't have to stipulate this in the will.
But the brutal fact is that they have no incentive to do this. Any money they invest in the property is eventually going to someone else's heirs, so they tend to be fairly unenthusiastic about doing more than the bare minimum. Plus, a life tenant is usually quite elderly and often has limited income, factors which make them reluctant to undertake decorating work or renovations. And, because they only have a life interest, they can't use the property as security to raise money for any work that they do want to do.
So, if they inherit a life interest in a property with a ten-year old kitchen and a 15-year old bathroom suite and live for 25 years, by the time they die the property has a 35-year old kitchen and a 40-year old bathroom, both of which may have been patched and repaired to keep them functional, but neither of which has been renewed or upgraded. Windows will probably have been repaired as required to keep them weatherproof, but they won't have been replaced and certainly won't have been upgraded. All-in-all, the house will be tired, dated, in need of a lot of work and generally what an estate agent would call a renovator's dream.
And that's the better end of the range of possible outcomes. It's not uncommon for a life tenant to refuse to spend any money on the property, or even to be unable to do so because they simply haven't got it. In this scenario properties can degrade very signficantly.
