AMA as a wills and probate solicitor

[Fi16]

AMA

That’s a tricky one and honestly I would go to a solicitor. From my experience yoh can’t apply for probate and to sell the house without paying IHT first and there is a payment deadline so in your case I would at the very least make an appointment for a free initial consultation somewhere. It sounds there will be quite a lot of IHT forms to fill out x

Thanks for your quick reply @Fi16

Yes, I think we will have to go to a solicitor. I am really worried about the house not selling quickly and being hounded for the IHT.

I heard you can request an extension to the payment deadline. Is that not the case? I mean what else can we do? We can't magic up hundreds of thousands of pounds we don't have.

If an unmarried couple with a potential inheritance tax liability then I wouldn’t recommend a will like that. I think they only do for a very straight forward position where IHT is not an issue. But also think about if it’s to siblings is it to just one set of siblings or partners siblings and if they die would the estate to pass to surviving siblings / partners siblings and in what shares or should it pass to their children first ? There’s a few things to consider. I would always say get one drawn up professionally and there’s loads of charities out there which do wills for free hoping of a donation in the will which I always think is fair. :)

Going from my experience of the last 3 weeks since mum died.

• Make a will and appoint executors you trust. Make sure they KNOW that they are executors and accept the responsibility.
• Purchase a funeral plan and tell people that it exists.
• Add a couple of grand into a bank account in either your executors names or your children's names to enable them to pay for sundries and ensure they are not immediately out of pocket due to your death.
• Gather all information re your banking and savings, life insurance, work benefits ect.

Keep all these details and the original will in a fire proof safe in your house or a POBOX. Periodically update the information inside. Give your executors the code/a key

Nobody likes to prepare or think to deeply about their death I know but it WILL happen one day and I do not want my kids or friends having to deal with this like I am.

Executor is one of 4 beneficiaries in a will (so 3 others plus executor). How tightly is everything regulated in practice? Is there any way an executor could effectively take more than their entitlement (e.g. by inflating “admin costs” or expenses), or does everything have to be accounted for and evidenced?

Want to give DD regular payments to help support her and put these regular payments out of IHT, it's absolutely obvious I can afford this if anyone looks at how much my savings go up every year, I keep good records of this, is that enough or do I need to keep all the records of income and expenditure.

Also if there is a spouse involved it depends on the value of the estate and how assets are owned whether everything passes to surviving spouse. Surviving spouse is normally entitled to all personal chattels a sum of 322k and then half the rest. The remainder is split between children in equal shares. Joint assets are not included in this calculation of the 322k figure so the fact that intestacy passes everything to surviving spouse can depend on the value of the deceased spouse’s estate x

@MissCooCooMcgoo I'm so sorry for your loss. My mum.died a few years ago and I spent the first month's in a daze.

There is no one I trust to be my executor if DH predeceases me apart from my 19 year old son and if anything were to happen to us both before he got much older I wouldn't want him to have to deal with that alone. If an executor comes to a solicitor for help can the solicitor essentially just sort it all out for them (for a fee or course).

How often are challenges to wills successful? Do some get resolved in mediation with compromise on both sides before court?

It depends where the payments come from you can give 3k per year tax free. You can also give regular gifts of income. Record keeping is good standard if you can do that. I would take advice someone further if you are considering regular gift of income to ensure this is appropriate for you :)

Can I add some advice? If you are nominating executors in your will, try to make sure that a) at least one of them is considerably younger than you and b) they are likely to have the time, energy and administrative ability to do the job.

Someone in my family is currently dealing with the mess left with a will naming two executors who are too old/frail/incapable/unwilling to act, so it is left to the beneficiaries to try and take over, but one of them hates the others and won't agree to anything.

It can be quite common. I see children excluded all the time from wills and challenges brought. They are normally settled before court via medication because the costs of going to court is a lot. It depends on who is claiming however because not everyone would be successful :)

If an adult child is estranged from a parent and is left nothing in the will, what legal grounds (if any) would they have to challenge it in the UK? Is estrangement enough reason for exclusion, or can they still make a claim under inheritance laws?

Yes absolutely that happens a lot :) we just run it on the executors behalf and do everything for an agreed fee :)

I want to leave everything to my disabled child under trust then, if anything is left, it's to go to another person (not related to me). I can't work out if this should be a vulnerable person's trust or a discretionary trust. The Will professional I spoke to didn't mention the possibility of a vulnerable person's trust but, when I asked if that was more appropriate, instantly agreed...

It all depends on the circumstances. Estranged adult children can make claims and the situation would be considered by the court. Vulnerable adult children are more likely to succeed , adult children who are self sufficient are unlikely to succeed. The relevant legislation is the Inheritance Act 1975. X

Thank You. At the moment I am just in a bit of a rage regarding how everything has been left. She was a financially savvy astute woman! Or at least I thought she was.

It's fine for me, I'm paying far too much in income tax and giving a regular income to DD seems a sensible way to reduce my income tax and reduce IHT in the end. My question is how much proof do I need to show it doesn't affect my lifestyle or whatever the rule is. I can easily show my savings go up considerably every year so it is obviously not affecting my standard of living, is that enough?

How do I get a copy of a will in Scotland?

We’ve had to. We’ve had to pay 10% of IHT every year, and the first instalment was due 6 months after my father’s death. Probate wasn’t even granted at that time. We’ve had the house sale fall through a few times. It’s been a nightmare. I cared for my mother full time and only earned a pittance- the IHT was more than I earned, plus my husband ended up with sepsis and on SSP for eight months. It’s nearly broken us. The probate/iht solicitor said we would have to get a loan if we couldn’t pay. Apparently you are supposed to be able to get an IHT loan from a bank with low interest rates.

Please can I ask, my late df left his half of the house and his savings to my dm, in trust for her during her life, which then (following her death) will then pass to the benfeficiaries of the two wills that were created (one for each of them, both exactly the same). When the solicitor was advising my parents (a month before my df died), she didn’t say that if my df had any savings accounts that had over £50k in them, then he should transfer money over to a different account, to drop it below £50k. So despite dad’s half of the estate being under the IHT threshold, we had to go through the probate process, as one of his savings accounts had £60k in, and the bank wouldnt release it without probate.

I am an executor and trustee, and I am in the process of trying to sort out a trust account for df’s savings. When my dm passes away, will we have to apply for probate again, because of the trust? Her half of the estate is below IHT threshold, and she has little in the way of savings. The trust holds half the house (tenants in common) plus my late df’s savings (around £95k). Should I open two (or more) different trust accounts of below £50k each, so that we don’t have to go through probate again? Thanks

OP, are you in England? I understand that in Scotland you cannot disinherit your children, and even in the common case where a person leaves everything to their spouse in a will, the children can make a claim, even if they are not dependents. Do you know anything about this? Does it happen much?

(I'm not in this situation, just curious).

Hi I’m in England and not qualified to practise in Scotland but understand there is heirship rules in place there whereas in England you can leave your estate to whoever you want (although there may be claims later ) but I don’t really know about the law in Scotland x

I have a question about IHT. I have been dealing with my mother's estate, and thankfully there is no IHT to pay, which makes things simpler. DH and I are not well off, but we own our house and have a substantial amount in pensions. If we died after the change to IHT on pensions, but before we have spent it all cruising round the world several times, our beneficiaries would have a huge tax bill.

What are the most common ways that people deal with this? As a PP mentioned, you can't get probate till you have paid the IHT, but often they can't afford to pay the IHT till they get probate. So, loans? Sell the house? But surely you can't use the proceeds from the house anyway, until you have probate.