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

I was very glad for mum's foresight in making one of her current accounts a joint account. It was the one that all the utilities went out of so I didn't have to fret about all the direct debits stopping while the account was frozen. It meant I could do her shopping during the pandemic and order things for her on the internet.

I was also glad that she'd made her funeral wishes very clear to her remaining family, I wasn't looking forward to telling them that there wasn't going to be a funeral. I was going to have a service until I found out that she'd told them that there would be nothing at all, I would have appreciated her having told me that.

Thank you

taxes I can do
IHT is due but again I’m on it
And it’s just me, so I don’t need to prove any other beneficiary

As for planning

i wish he’d allowed me to help more with his paperwork before/after it went to pot with dementia.

it was all so organised by him, a RIP folder with lists of accounts, wishes, passwords. Then he undid most of it between confusion and paranoia

I had been joint signatory on a lot of accounts but he undid that too.

also if parent has a burial plot, check that church are still accepting new burials. Or if the plot/space was agreed in writing before it closed. I had to find ancient Church paperwork to prove his place. Which was very unwelcome.

and I wish he’d told me who he wanted certain family non valuable things to go to. And let me clear out the rest.

there is no value at all in his ‘antique’ furniture. I’ve ended up paying to have it removed or given it away. Brown large items are not in fashion, even if ancient and made of nice wood, antiques experts said value less that same weight of firewood.

and I’m most importantly I wish I had NOT told his bank about death until I’d gone online and printed statements, used their search function to look up things for tax return, etc. I told them as soon as I had death cert and never imagined I’d lose historic viewing (not new transactions- I knew that would stop) access the online accounts he had with one bank when I had POA

however the funeral directors were amazing. The priest so kind too. I did everything quickly for my religion and foreign relatives travel dates , not his religion, and while priest was surprised, they all accommodated my wishes.

I had my eulogy in draft form for years, just added to as necessary after every hospital visit and drink or two - dad was a —dare devil— spirited and independent so his death has been nearly expected many times over the years, only made worse by dementia, where he didn’t think he was old.

If you are the only beneficiary and there’s no IHT then no, I don’t think you need a separate account.

The purpose is to be able to show your workings to the tax man or other beneficiaries.

thank you

I was probably here under a different name, but this board helped greatly in dad’s last weeks. I fed him wine and tried to take him for a joyride 🏎️ ;)

That’s what I don’t understand
so far even the DWP has paid me his missing 1 week of pension, direct to my account and without grant of probate

so do I need an estate account or separate bank account at all?

dad had a rental property, and agent has after I produced Will and death cert, and speaking to their solicitors (& me to mine) started paying me direct so I can authorise maintenance payments. Until then I kept telling them to hold rent so they could do so. Tenants are lovely and are staying, so I didn’t want anything to go wrong and not be fixed promptly.

Just having all the paperwork in a limited space is a good start!
Car and house insurance was "interesting" (and still is - we had to find a specialist insurer because Mum's partner was left right of residence in the house in her will but technically the will trust owns it - ok once we'd found them).

We're just starting the process for DMum's estate. The paperwork is a bit confusing understatement.

Mum had Dad's IT threshold (Dad's estate was about £200k, everything left to DMum.) DMum's estate is about £530k - assuming there will be no IT liability on this......... It's so difficult to wade through the varying websites, and requirements seemed to change at the end of 2022.

DMum's estate is purely money in banks, National Savings and ISAs, will we need to complete IT paperwork or just apply for probate?

I’m sorry for the bereavements that mean everyone is here. We didn’t do Probate after dad died because he and mum left mirror wills leaving everything to each other, then it all comes to me and DB.

I’m in the middle of some paperwork for mum as LPA holder. Can I ask - are there any pointers to what I could be doing now that will make our lives easier when the inevitable happens? Anything you wish you’d known or sorted while your loved one was still alive? From an estate perspective obviously that is - I will take the emotional and grief side as complicated and difficult for all of us and leave it to one side.

Why do I need an executor( or not as above 👏) account?

is there any particular reason if everything he had is coming to me? There is IHT to pay, solicitor working that out.

I have almost finished DFs personal tax return.

but await two statements of interest by post, after doing ^^ today. That’s all I’ve done in 4 hours, request x2 figures that are probably very small, so I can finish his tax return

Hello

Joining in with a sigh of relief…

f*ck me it’s antiquated.
I seem spend days on hold, to be told they can’t speak to me but will write, by actual slow post, to DF’s former address for me to drive to to collect, open, scan, read, and call them back.

and repeat

Thanks for starting this thread thesandwich, we have 4 DPs between 85-95 so sadly this is likely to be an issue before too long.

There is some really useful advice already, thanks to those who have shared their experiences.

I did it for my late DM. But she was very organised, having had to deal with it for her mother, aunt, and grandmother herself.

I had a notebook and pen, a box file, and a bunch of cascading Todo lists in the Google Keep app. Everything I did or received - calls, visits, letters sent, forms filled in, monies paid out or in - went in the notebook.

I didn't get solicitors to do it for me, BUT I did pay them for advice on what the will meant exactly in some places and what actions they recommended I take, plus, sorting out the Land Registry forms which were less obvious because of a will trust.

In the course of events I may have to do it again 3 or 4 times. The trouble is that the scut work (gathering up all the accounts etc) you end up doing anyway!

I was a professional problem investigator (for a very niche area of software) and approached this in the same deliberate way : what do I know already, what do I need to find out, and what actions are required based on what I know right now? So I would have a main todo list with, say
"3. Sort house"
on it, then a "House" to-do list which would start with "Find out what to do about house" and then have more items added as I did so.

Friends who had been through it already were happy to give me tips.
Ironically the organisation with the most traditional procedures - Newbury Building Society, who got me to make an appointment and turn up with various specific documents - were the easiest. One and done. Halifax were happy to do stuff online or on the phone but screwed things up repeatedly.

My dad died last September and mum passed in February.
I am retired which has been fortunate as the ‘sadmin’ is ever consuming and their estate has been relatively simple.

My brother and I are the executor’s and opened an executor’s accounts and had their ‘bank’ money transferred to it.
Unfortunately you get a cheque book and nothing else. Not even internet banking.

I got probate organised quite easily and at the moment, their house has sold so awaiting completion.

The one nightmare has been The Prudential who have made my life miserable ever since dad died last year.
They have almost 70k of the estate and seem to want to hang on to it for dear life. I’ve had to get a financial advisor on board to decipher the forms.

We are waiting until every penny has hit the account, and then every bill has been paid in full before we allocate the estate.

Happy to answer any questions x

Lots of good advice being given already here.

I completely wigged out after DM died and decided that I needed to do everything immediately, even though I was clearly in no fit state (but thought I was).

Something that I got told off for was in thinking that the POA still held after death - it doesn't, so Barclays froze DM's account - which means I can't pay into it (which is what I needed to do in order to consolidate all the bits and pieces), or out.

I had to go through the inheritance tax with HMRC, which I cocked up big time. My advice for anyone else who has to go down that route is to take your time and make sure you approach IHT400 with the due deference that it deserves. I'm fairly bright and fairly numerate, but managed to cut the red wire instead of the black and am still trying to unpick it nine months on.

I spend many hours on the phone to HMRC/Barclays and would recommend you have a dedicated note book to keep track of conversations / dates / actions.

When you are valuing the contents you are valuing at selling rate, not what you’d pay to buy new. The lawyer told me that unless you have expensive jewellery, watches, art, antiques — the sort of stuff which was insured separately because of value - a nominal amount is fine.

Sadly on the whole you will end up paying to get rid off house contents rather than them being worth anything. It makes a big difference if you are under or over Inheritance tax limits. If you are genuinely well under no-one really cares - just stick a nominal couple of thousand on the form. The whole point of probate seems to be to make sure that the government gets paid any inheritance tax due. If you are over the limit or borderline then get obviously valuable collections or objects valued by a specialist in whatever you are try to value or you can Google if it’s something easy to find online, just keep a note of where your information comes from.

https://www.gov.uk/applying-for-probate

What do you do about valuing the contents of a house?

Is there any guide as to how to even get started? I’d never even heard of an Executor’s account. I’m expecting to have two to do in the next 5 years, and I’m executor on another and possibly a 4th (one loses touch with these things).

Sorry, more things keep occurring to me. If you don’t have a direct line to a bereavement team, always ask before any dealings with anyone if they have a bereavement team. Much easier to deal with. Before calling any company, Google to see if there is a dedicated bereavement number, often queues are shorter with no IVR.

Invest in a set of wireless headphones for you phone if you can afford it and don’t already have any, you will spend a lot of time on hold or in queues, they allow you to multitask whilst waiting.

By the way, a lot of organisations will happily pay you electronically.

Those that won’t are prone to also sending cheques of a size that won’t work if you try paying in cheques via a banking app. Nationwide Building Society have a form on their website you can print off, fill in and post to your local branch with the cheques. A 2nd class stamp was cheaper and easier than traipsing into town for me.

Shares if held on paper certificates are a bit of a nightmare, don’t tackle them on a day you are feeling particularly fragile.

If you have any paper shares to deal with (electronic are easier), watch out for the registrar failing to pay dividends to you that arise between date of death and probate. I had to call them and ask them to check, then had a fight (which I won) to get them to issue cheques for me for free (they tried telling me there was a charge of £60 for reissue of dividend cheques. I pointed out they had frozen payment and never issued the cheques in the first place).