HMRC & Probate shock!

[TotallyUnexpected]

I've name changed for this as I've been telling all & sundry so could be very outing but I thought I'd share it with fellow Mumsnetters to give hope during difficult times.

Dealing with my mother's estate, I sent off the IHT400 forms, other IHT4** forms & a ton of paperwork to HMRC on 14th May.

HMRC contacted me on 4th June stating they were happy with the paperwork, giving me the references to allow me to apply for probate.

I sent off the application for probate on 18th June.

2nd July an email from HMRC arrived stating that they had received my application & it would take up to 16 weeks to deal with.

6th July I receive another email from HMRC telling me that probate had been approved & I would get the paperwork in 10 working days.

FOUR DAYS!!!

Probate application paperwork would've been sent off earlier but my fellow executor was away.

I am delighted as it's been balls-achingly bad so far with all the IHT forms but yes, HMRC have proved that they can deal with these things swiftly if they put their minds to it.

I just hope that other families that are going through of this get treated as well as I did.

Ours came through in less than a month. However… a month after that they changed their minds and said they would sent a district valuer out, which took another few months to happen and be approved afterwards.

Nearly a year for us sadly and over a year since the parent passed. Unable to contact them via chat. Solicnot able to get through either. Simple estate.

When we did it for my FIL we submitted it in January and we didn't get it til July and I had to chase it .

This time we are doing it online , although just waiting confirmation from the HMRC that we don't have to pay IHT . I'm hoping it's quicker doing it online rather than sending the forms in .

What was the district valuer for if you don’t mind me asking?

Blimey - if only their other departments were as efficient!

We write to them, they take months to reply, then give us 3 weeks to reply to their letter, which then takes them months to respond to...

Then they declare they haven't received your letter, and when you give them the tracking number they manage to mysteriously find it...

In terms of IHT if you can't access funds within the six months you just accrue interest. So it costs the estate but not the executors directly.

They came to look at the property to assess whether the estate agents had valued it highly enough for IHT. I think they thought they the property should have been worth more. Thankfully the district valuer agreed with the valuation we had got from a local estate agent for probate.

It’s not always a £1million threshold if it’s one person.

Re IHT before probate has been granted, you have to pay 10% of IHT every year until the property is sold. If you can’t afford it you have to get an executor’s loan, but it’s not supposed to be at anything above a normal interest rate. But any non property assets have to have IHT paid immediately. So in my case the first payment was a good few thousand higher than the following ones.

I saw my brother (executor) at the weekend. He said a ‘code’ has been issued, and that the solicitor has told him should be no later than 10 weeks, and then he can start to distribute the money. Does that sound right?

Getting the code means the application can be uploaded I think, and then you'll wait for the grant. Then once you have the Grant, if the estate is all cash you can start to distribute. We had to wait for a house sale, and once that was done and final IHT calculated we could finalise the estate and distribute funds.

oline · Today 18:08

UPDATE! Probate has been approved, and the grant will be posted out within the next week. It’s taken exactly a fortnight to the day from application sent. It looks like the probate office has well and truly caught up. I hope it’s as quick for anyone on else here that’s applying and waiting.

When you applied online , did you send the original Will to the probate office ?

I'm about to apply when we receive the code now we have had confirmation that we have no tax to pay . We sent a copy of the Will to the HMRC already.

I would’ve thought so. Sorry to be vague but my brother is executor, so he did all the paperwork via a solicitor (grant of probate only)
All I can say is, if you’re applying now, it’s very quick!

@RosaMoline that's good to now hopefully get the code quickly.