Advice needed on carrying out the wishes of a will.

[Tolkienista]

My mother died on June 30th, she'd been on "end of life" care since February, so we had a lot of time to get her affairs in order.
Her will is straightforward, dividing her money between her four children (including myself.)
Her house sale completed in March...... £223k
All her accounts (except her ISA) were joint accounts with me.
The proceeds of the house sale is in a savings account in my name, all done at the bank her house sale went into.
The reason it's in my.name only is because my mother wasn't present when account was opened, but it's directly traced back to the sale of her house.
So the total value of house sale + savings =£270k to be divided between the four of us.

My question. Can we proceed with dividing her assets between the four of us with the help of the bank without involving a solicitor?
The executor of her will is now in her 80s house bound and in no way capable of performing her role.

There are no outstanding debts to be paid and probate isn't needed either, all confirmed by the bank.
All above was checked out well in advance over preceding months to her death.

Do you know what......I don't know!
The money from the sale of her house was paid into our joint bank account, the solicitors never questioned it even though they could see my name was on the account too.

Yes I've done tell us once and that was my thought too about letting everything settle, but it was one of my siblings who posted yesterday they wanted everything sorted asap re: my mother's will.

Sorry for your loss. Grief is exhausting you need to let your body sleep. Theres always 2 person shouting for money. I suggests solicitor you dont nerd the stress and there is enough miney there. A be done properly amd b the sibling who needs assp can chade them. I struggled with basic stuff like this amd my job is in law just couldn’t think straight dont best yourself up.

The proceeds are in accounts in OP’s name.

It doesn’t seem to me that Probate is necessary if all the money is in. It serves no purpose, especially given the complication that you are not the executor.

You may however wish to get advice from a solicitor how to avoid the payments from your account to the other beneficiaries being seen a gifts from you, with potential adverse tax consequences for you in the future.

If the money is legally all yours now, presumably any payments to your siblings will have to be gifts from you, not distributions from your mother's estate?

There’s nothing illegal or wrong in what you’ve done, I didn’t mean to imply that. As long as your mums name was on the account, the solicitor would send the money to her, especially if you - as LPA acting on her behalf - were instructing them. It just complicates things at this end because of the standard survivorship clause that means the surviving joint account holder receives all the funds in the account.

Activating and using the LPA would have kept things more straightforward as there would be no mixing of accounts. Your mums accounts / assets would have remained hers entirely, and you as LPA would have been authorised to access those accounts to do what needs to be done for her benefit. As long as the LPA is activated correctly and the attorney keeps accurate records of expenditure etc, it protects you.

BTW the LPA stops when your mum died. As you are no longer attorney and you are not an executor, you don’t really have any role to play, legally. However, obviously someone needs to take things forward and it’s certainly in your interest to engage a solicitor to deal with this situation correctly. Presumably the solicitors fees will be paid from your ‘mums money’ before it’s split between the siblings.

@Wofflewaffle thank you for your extensive message and clarification. We only found out that the LPA ceased to exist when someone dies the day after we exchanged contracts on her house when I inadvertently blurted out to the solicitor how ill my mother was......and there was silence on the other end if the phone, then she explained why.
We honestly didn't have a clue.
We brought the completion date of her house forward 24 hours, so scared we're we that she'd die.

Unbelievably she lived for almost another 4 months.

Anyway we've discussed it as a family and we're definitely going to get legal advice.

That is what's really worrying me now.
I had no idea that this was the implication of what I've done.

That is exactly what I'm thinking.
I've massively messed up, nobody explained any of this to me. It's a total mess and I feel sick.

You haven’t messed up. You’re doing this honestly.

Our probate solicitors are holding onto the last £20k from my parent’s estate in case of any further payments or fees.

You may also need formal estate accounts to effectively show that this is a distribution, not gifts. The solicitors can prepare these for you. Ours was drafted for us to check before distribution then finalised.

Just to say not to worry about this it can be sorted

i I would say that there are two issues here - firstly the admin of actually getting hold of the money belonging to your mother which you seem to have done so that is good!

the second is deciding who owns it and do you have the right to distribute it.
as mentioned by others
that depends on whether the account was set up as a convenience or similar situation which means it should be dealt with according to the will and forms part of the estate

if the alternative situation arises and it automatically becomes your money then you can still change the legal outcome provided that with 2 years of your mothers death you complete a “deed of Variation” which would effectively mean the money to your siblings would be treated for legal and tax purposes as coming from your mother - obviously the wording would be done by a solicitor but it is fairly straightforward

Under Section 142 of the Inheritance Tax Act 1984, a Deed of Variation can be used to redirect any asset that passed to you automatically through the right of survivorship, which includes both joint bank accounts and jointly held land or property.

deeds of variation are often used say to redirect money to grandchildren but they can also be used as above

so don’t worry!

@ruthieness thank you so much for your long, yet very informative post that is extremely helpful.
I've literally spent a good hour this afternoon writing a time line for every action taken since the sale of her house went through in March this year.

And one significant action was a week before we completed the sale of my mum's house.
I asked the solicitor where the funds would go, she never pointed out the ongoing implications of paying the money into our joint bank account that had been effective since 2011 when my dad died.
So I don't know if that is significant.

I wouldn’t like to speculate on whether this account qualifies as a “convenience account”

just saying it can be sorted either way!

it obviously helps that everyone is on the same page.