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

I'm going through the "sadmin" - great term - at the moment. We are in Scotland so the process is completely different. There is no property to sell as it has always been held in mum's sole name which makes things easier. But because dad was so savvy with saving/investing we have to go through confirmation which is the same as probate in England. I'm at the contacting all the financial institutions and getting notifcation of all the accounts stage. We did speak to the lawyer who held the will and they wanted £195 + VAT per hour to do that.

Most companies seem to have the process well honed, mum was very vague about what accounts dad had in his sole name but knew they were with RBS, so I just filled in the forms online, told them the details I knew like name, DOB, address, and uploaded a photo of the will and his death certificate.

It is time consuming and difficult though. And will be even worse when mum dies. At that point I think I'll be paying the £195+ VAT per hour for someone else to do it for me.

I'm sorry for your loss sandwich- I remember you well. I was there for a while as Dad was terminal and mum extremely difficult. All the lovely advice and support, I really appreciated.

I've been able to put barely anything into practice though as mum is still incredibly difficult!

We didn't manage PoA for him, she asked for it with about a month to go. We still don't have it for her!

We are in a better position with the ILs though still complicated.

I'll hang out and learn from you all though as I'll be needing this soon enough!

I did the same thing with the bank account, I'd had a joint account with mum which is where all the utility bills were paid from. It automatically passed to me, it meant that refunds could be paid back to the account that the utility providers already knew about. Everything went through there except for the shares which I transferred rather than sold. The solicitors were a bit huffy about using it for the proceeds of the house but as they'd known the account details for five months I was not interested in hearing objections three days before the sale. I was also not opening an executor account just for that, right at the end of the process, so we settled on them advising me to contact their probate department if I needed reminding of my duties as administrator. I was quite confident that I'd got the hang of it by then so I didn't.

I think the very last council tax refund also wanted to pay to the executor of, I rang them up and told them that it was technically an overpayment of the last month's DD which wouldn't have happened at all if they'd known about the sale date before that month's payment had gone through. There was some consultation and yes, a refund back to the bank account would be possible. In both estates I've done, calling and saying that there isn't an executor account has meant that an alternative means of payment became possible.

Very sensible. You remind me that I still haven’t finished sorting through the ‘death’ files, although made a good start. I have gone with the ‘shoving the remaining paperwork in the spare bedroom and shutting the door’ approach. Still have quite a lot of late DH’s possessions to deal with too, but burnt out from going straight on to dealing with elderly DPs. I thought I would give myself this year off.

I'm done administrating. I agreed with the sole beneficiary (me) that the estate could be distributed if they agreed to cover the final funeral costs (the cremation will be 19 months after death as mum left her body to the teaching hospital).

Having learned from my previous experience with my husband's estate, I filed all the paperwork in a sensible place, putting my identity papers back where they should go rather than leaving them with the estate papers. I'm sure that extra copy of my birth certificate that I had to order will come in useful someday. There is a temptation at the end to ram it all into a file and hide it away because you'll never need to look at it again but that's not a good idea if your identity documents are in it.

Mine was easy, I knew where everything was, the estate was well under the IHT threshold and was simple - house, car, a few shares and the majority on deposit. It all came to me and that made it easier too. I think I was fortunate with my choice of estate agent, I had the house valued by a valuer rather than an estate agent and I thought ahead and asked him if he would recommend anyone. It was a small local agency I'd never heard of and they really did earn their money. They did all the viewings (free), decided on an open house one weekend - they just got on and did their job. When I valued my own house as part of my husband's estate it was easier because I live on a 1980's estate and Zoopla turned up half a dozen recent sales of houses that were exactly like mine.

If I had to do it again I'd have a gardener so I could spend that couple of hours a week on clearing the house faster and I'd bring in the house clearance people earlier rather than trying to do it all myself. I have no regrets about applying for probate myself, I didn't find it difficult. If there had been IHT to pay I might have paid to have someone look over what I did in case there was something I could have claimed that I didn't know about.

Sorry, badly worded, half awake! I the semi dormant account was one I already had in my name. If you don’t have one, just open one in your own name.

Hi OP, I missed cockroach café but am a ‘graduate’ of doing three lots of probate in the space three years. Sorry for your loss.

I couldn’t find an executor account and ended up just using a semi dormant basic current account and paying everything into that. I transferred the few pounds left in it out to my main account so I had a clean slate.

I had no problem with getting people to pay stuff to me in my name. On the one occasion where I ended up with cheques written to ‘whatever the executor of whatever’s relative’ I phoned my bank and they agreed to accept the cheques as they had my name on and then I transferred the money into the account I was using as the executor account.