Calling fellow cockroach cafe … um graduates? Going through probate- advice and support thread

@BestIsWest I’ve at least opened ours to get an idea of the scale of the issue. There’s a lot of brand new item of men’s clothing, still in bags and with tags on. Mum bought new clothes for dad but he was never bothered and preferred to wear ones he’d “worn in” and were comfortable. Some charity shop is going to do quite well out of it eventually, as v-necked M&S men’s jumpers don’t go out of fashion with that generation!

@funnelfan how strange! Mum is the same, she couldn’t look at DFs clothes without crying. I’ve taken some to the charity shop but there’s still a wardrobe unopened.

@BestIsWest obviously IANAL, but hopefully what I was told will give you the right questions to ask your own solicitor.

I had to double take as I could have written your post even down to still having DFs clothes to sort three years on. I think I’m going to wait now until we have to do mums, as she gets unsettled when we do things around the house.

@funnelfan thank you! That’s brilliant. I’m 99% sure the deeds are with a local firm of solicitors as I remember DF getting them from the bank when they paid off the mortgage and showing them to me before he took them to the solicitors. I was a teenager at the time and the solicitors have been taken over by a larger firm now but I was in contact with them for a certified copy of his will three years ago.
I may give them a ring but it sounds like it’s one less thing to worry about.

Oh and there was no concern about mum selling the house after dad died, as we have a clear set of marriage and death certificate and wills etc.

I’m in exactly the same position and had a thread in legal recently on this very question. I also spoke to a local solicitor.

The key question is, do you know where the deeds are? I tracked mums down to the central archive of the building society that took over the building society from the original mortgage. If you know where they are then you’re fine. Any subsequent sale will proceed on the old paper based process, and the new owner will have to register with the Land Registry. You will need an experienced solicitor, and so will your buyers. The solicitor I spoke to was old school and he said the reason people think the registration needs to happen before sale is that many newly qualified solicitors don’t know how to do the old paper based sales these days. And they insist the vendors do all the work first. But it’s not a legal requirement at all.

The other reason my solicitor was lukewarm about the idea of proactively registering the property is that there is currently a one year backlog at the Land Registry which would hold you up making a sale if you tried to market the property while it’s still ongoing, but a one year process post sale would not impact the new owners at all.

Thanks for starting this thread thesandwich and sorry for your loss. I’m still in the Cockroach cafe with DM but I was an executor for DF three years ago. Everything went to Mum and was under the IHT levels so we didn’t need probate and it was quite straightforward. I’ve still to finish sorting DF’s clothes though and there’s a likelihood that DM will need to go into residential care at some point so likely the house will need to be cleared and sold.

Anyway, my question - their house was owned jointly and is not registered with the land registry (hasn’t been sold in the last 30 or so years) so I need to think about getting this done in case we need to sell don’t I? Has anyone done it?

@thesandwich
My relative claimed travel costs for getting to and from the house to clear it as it was a 40 mile round trip and the other executors who were more local had decided it should be done in person rather than getting the professionals in to empty it. Think she produced petrol receipts and kept records of when she'd been.

I don't think you can claim for your time as it doesn't sound like you're incurring costs eg having to take unpaid time off work or having to pay for extra childcare or something?

It's worth looking into getting professional house clearance to do it- they don't cost that much, they do it quickly and efficiently and certainly the ones we used to clear a purchase kept any paperwork, ID type stuff to one side for us.

@thesandwich Your search term would be "what expenses can lay executors charge?". Unless it says otherwise in the will you cannot charge for your time unless this is something that you do professionally. You might want to check that you're on the same page as your siblings with how you approach the house clearance. The quick way is where you pay someone to empty and clean, those costs would be chargeable to the estate. The cheap way involves endless hours of your time. Unless your sibs are going to be there washing windows alongside you then I'd suggest getting the professionals in.

@AnSionnachGlic I cleared my childhood home in the last 12 months, mum had been in residential care for nine months before that. I hated going through the door because she wasn't there. I took someone with me whenever possible, one person cut the grass while the other filled the bin, the boot of the car and the backseat of the car. It was a race to get out of there. I sorted through it in my own home, I had a washing pile, a charity box, a metal recycling pile and a box of not-now-but-later. I left it in the car and brought it into the house one box/bag at a time so it didn't feel such a massive job. Once the car was empty, if my bin wasn't full we went and did it again. I did the easy things first, my father's clothes, the tins on the kitchen shelf and worked up to the hard things. At the end I had someone in to take away the beds and freezer because I couldn't have moved them myself.

Not entirely the same @thesandwich but when I completed the annual accounts for DM, as guardian, the Office of Public Guardian, once they had approved then the OPG made a suggestion for the amount of recompense I could be awarded for my time. It was about £1000 each time and I always took it.

Commiserations to all who are here. My dm passed away last November and her house etc is left solely to me( only child). I'm in Ireland so it's probably a bit different but I got my solicitor to deal with probate and she's been brilliant. There have been the initial contact with utilities etc that I had to do but everything else is in her hands. My main problem is , that I find it so difficult to go into her house to clear it out. She lived 5 mins from me but I have only been there a handful of times. Her chair, remote control, rosary beads etc, are like she has just gone to the bathroom. It still even smells like her. I've roped in my dh and teenage kids but there is only so much they can do. I need to go through all her photos, books, paperwork, photos, clothes etc and it's so difficult. I go there full of intentions to get stuck in, but when I walk into the kitchen, bedroom etc it's like a flood of emotion comes up my throat and Im frozen ! My husband says there is no hurry but I have to get stuck in instead of putting it off! We probably will sell the house so when probate comes through I'll have to get moving😪. It's so difficult.

@thesandwich My funeral director booked a double slot at the crematorium to avoid that biker scenario (this was for my husband) as he said that people would want to chat afterwards and it would take ages to clear. He wasn't wrong.

The funeral is the last point where you're on display, afterwards everyone else returns to their lives and you have to start reshaping your own. I'm glad that you didn't have today's weather because that doesn't encourage standing and catching up.

Glad it went well @thesandwich . My overriding memory of my mum’s funeral is thinking how much she would have enjoyed it and that she should have been there to see everyone. Which is kind of strange really.

my tip for probate is one I was given by a friend and similar to one already given about not telling the bank of the death until you have all the statements etc. It’s to say go and stop all direct debits if you have POA (technically it stops at death but if you’ve not reported the death you can still stop transactions). My friend didn’t do this and spent months trying to get refunds for services that weren’t delivered as a result of death and this could all have been prevented if the direct debits had been stopped.

Well done @thesandwich. I bet today you will feel really wiped. You are in a new place from this morning as a line has been finally drawn. Be kind to yourself and gather your strength before you throw yourself back into the sadmin.

My twopence worth is that everything takes five times longer than you want it to happen.

In six months I've managed to have DM's local Council confirm in writing that although they had a 'charge' over her property, financially she/we owe them nothing and the charge can be removed. I've also managed to submit DM'a final accounts to the OPG and had them approved so I no longer have to deal with them.

But now everything is sitting with the £250/hr solicitor and £225/hr paralegal and this might take a considerable period of time to move forward. I'm thinking nine months. Meanwhile DM's house badly needs its external windows painting.

Good luck today @thesandwich

Good luck today @thesandwich
Hope the sun is shining for her your eulogy will be beautiful, even if someone else has to read it for you

This ^^

Paying for help isn’t weakness
Neither is asking for help

And to everyone missing the DFs today gentle hugs

I am weeping, clearing the final things before I complete on his home
My amazing friends have helped me, and it’s just the last push for fingers crossed next week.

Then back to the never ending paperwork search. Why did he keep every letter sent or received?

Having this experience recently, my personal view is get a solicitor to do it all.

My Dad sorted my Nan's probate, which was incredibly simple, and even that took 9 months of stress.

My uncle is sorting his father's, and is finding it a nightmare, and until recently he was a probate solicitor!

In my case, we had excellent solicitors. I still had to do various bits of paperwork, and organise the sale of her house (all in the middle of Covid, and Mum lived the other end of the country) but it was money incredibly well spent. Didn't need to pay up front, just taken from the final inheritance.

I appreciate it won't be appropriate in all cases for a multitude of reasons, but it takes away a lot of stress. Trying to do something very technical, at a time when you're likely grieving, can add to the stress and lead to unintentional errors, as one PP has sadly experienced.

There is an Industry grouping called 'Solicitors for the Elderly'- worth getting one from that group to assist with any pre (eg LPA) or post death issues.