Are we now responsible for FILs debts now he's passed away?

[DebtAfterDeath]

Really sorry, posted in legal but also here as i know traffic is heavier and i am desperate for advice.
FIL recently passed away ( 5 weeks ago).
Today my husband has found a letter from Ovo stating he owes £3600.
We also believe he had other debs and CCJs but we have no idea on the amounts.
My SIL used the Tell us Once service but Citizens Advise told me today they don't notify people he owes money to and that's our responsibility.
His only estate is the £6000 in his bank when he died (which the bank have already sent to SIL and she has split in half with my husband) and a potential £10k life insurance claim. He privately rented and had nothing else, no valuables and so on.
We are really worried that we may get chased up for money and Citizen's Advise have recommend we register his death in The Gazette. It's going to cost £100 to do it (fine). But nobody I'm talking to seems to have heard of this and are saying pretty much just leave it, he didn't own a lot anyway and this is more for people with large estates.
We want to do the right thing I'm just not sure what that is?
Also there is an option on The Gazette to use the forwarding address service so our address doesn't get disclosed but again this doubles the cost of the notice to almost £200 and we aren't sure how necessary it is
We are so clueless, I'd be really grateful for any advice. The lady at Citizen's Advice was lovely but admitted she got all her advice off the internet as it was a new one to her!
Thanks

They are his children. They are holding his money. There is no need to apply for Letters of Administration when there is no property and the money in the accounts is this small.

CAB explain it all.

Agreed, you do not need Letters of administration for small estates with no property. Again, I have been through this recently and no-one required either probate or letters of administration, as the person died intestate, with a small amount of savings, a small amount of debt and no property, much like in this case.

Cheers for the link @BadNomad

@ThreeLittleDots Where in OP's description of how her DH and SIL went to register the death together, went to the bank together and have been searching for debts together, does she insinute that her DH has been forced into sorting out his father's estate against his will

I missed this post earlier today. Sorry for my errors, and thanks so much for being so unpleasant about it. Says a lot about you

Kindest regards 😊

not really IMO, interpretation would only be the correct word if something you were reading or listening to was ambiguous.. the rules here are very black and white depending on certain criteria and are NOT open to interpretation, by not “interpreting” what you’ve read correctly, you’ve misunderstood what it means, but are stating it like it’s a fact, it’s not really helpful to give the op misinformation, as well intentioned as that may be.

the facts are she doesn’t need probate, and doesn’t need people telling her over and over again that she does.

she’s had some in person advice now so sounds like it’s all cleared up.

@sandyhappypeople indeed it does, but I do think interpretation is correct. The rules as set out on the government website are far from clear. In reality, for estates not subject to IHT, it will depend on the demands of the organisation holiday their estate's assets and on advice (you can ring HMRC). To give you a relatively recent example, my uncle left everything to his wife (my aunt). There was no IHT due. Accordingly and according to the weblink above, you would expect there to be no need for probate. Yet my aunt was advised that probate would be needed. This was a bit of an unexpected nightmare for her. It took the best part of a year and, in the end, she ended up in floods of tears on the phone to someone in HMRC because she couldn't pay her own household bills until probate was granted. My parents had to help her for the duration of this nightmare.

*holding

It has nothing whatsoever to do with the company transferring money over!!! Paying debts is the sole responsibility of the person who is handling the estate - and I really hope no-one ever appoints you as an executor of one.

Stuggling to understand how you informing utility companies of his death means that the bills don't require paying, and a month after someone's death is not too long a gap to be paying their debts. Presumably there was a reason why the council were threatening him with prison, I don't imagine they just wake up one morning and decide to do that.

As I said, the person who has died has still had the use of whatever service they are being billed for - why should they not pay for it if the money is available?

There really are some skewed views on here.

Catch up @Threenow - it transpires I didn’t do anything wrong.

He wasn’t threatened with prison over non payment of council tax. He was 3 months late due to a chronic illness rendering him unable to work. HTH, I’m sure you think he probably deserved it.

I never said he deserved it, I said the council obviously had a reason for their actions - although I find being 3 months late a strange reason for an action as drastic as prison. Surely if he told them he was unable to work something could have been sorted, unless he was like you and was waiting for someone to contact him.

Wow what an unnecessarily shitty comment. Are you pleased with yourself?

Sadly they will and do chase late payers, maybe look into the aggressive practices.

The commital to prison letters that are sent from council tax take well over 11 months. From missing payment to court takes 3 months and then the tax debt can go to bailiffs. Then it can be several months before bailiff are unsuccessful and send it back to council, who at this point will be looking at sending a commital to prison letter if nothing is being paid at all, they aren’t sent out regularly and it’s a last resort. I’ve never seen a commital to prison letter with a tax arrears if under £3000.

Surely if he told them he was unable to work something could have been sorted.

Who the hell do you think you are?

What on earth has it got to do with you what this person's dad may or may not have done to incur the wrath of his creditors.. or how he dealt with it, sometimes people's problems become so overwhelming to the point where they can't deal with it anymore, you're talking as if he CHOSE to have those life circumstances, and could have easily fixed it if he could have just been arsed to make a phone call? How utterly patronising.

I can only assume from your attitude that you've never experienced anything like that before, never struggled with debt through no fault of your own, or have ever known anyone suffering with a chronic illness, because you lack of empathy and understanding for a fellow human being who has lost her dad is quite frankly, disgusting. I don't understand why it would bother you so much where as you feel you have to keep questioning her?

She hasn't asked for your 'opinion', all she's done is shared the story of what she did when a close family member died.. she obviously didn't know what to do like most people don't when faced with the sudden death of a close family member, she informed his creditors and did the correct thing, the fact that some unknown money came through later is neither here or there, his estate was already 'settled' at that point. That's a moral question only the person in that situation can decide upon, no one has the right to judge them.

She sounds like she's been through enough, so how about winding your fucking neck in.

Interesting. What was the reason that she was advised that probate would be needed? Did they have separate bank accounts? Or own a property as tenants in common?

My experience with a small estate was that while some places may be sensible Barclays was a total pain. They wouldnt tell me the amount in the bank account at first, wanted me to get probate for a couple of thousand. You have to pay for probate and I wasnt going to do it unless I had to. They only finally agreed to tell me the amount after they had paid it to the funeral director and I pointed out I needed to settle the balance from the small amount of funds in a building society that had already been handed over without probate (I sent death certificate and will)..

OP some useful advice for you - you need to sort out his pension, if he was of that age, rent payments, council tax. You may be able to reclaim something from the tax man. I think I had to actually pay back a bit of a pension. Check the insurance with the company and check every bit of paperwork you can find in case there is some entitlement to a lump sum from a works pension if he died before pension age.

All companies should be contacted and once paid any money left over should be split not before.

Thank you @sandyhappypeople welp said!

@ThreeLittleDots yherws nothing that screams check your privilege like believing council tax will just say “Ok sir can’t pay it? That’s fine, we won’t ask you for it.” You have NO idea

The debts he left are not your responsibility

There is a set order for paying out estates and debts and funeral expenses have first dibs.
That responsibility rests with the executor. If the executor pays out the estate without paying the debts, they are held liable for paying the debt. As CA have recommended adverts I'm going to assume you are in England. The executor or in the case of intestacy the personal reps should place these adverts to prevent them being held liable for the debts so yes, spend the money on getting them done and don't distribute the estate until after their expiry (usually 2 months). If the debts intimated exceed the assets, you have an insolvent estate. That means that the beneficiaries are getting nothing from the estate and the executor should put the estate through the insolvency procedure and the debts will be paid pro rata. The only way anyone else is liable for the debts is if the executor pays out the estate without ascertaining the extent of the debts and in that case the executor is personally liable

They are the responsibility of the estate before they are entitled to spend his money

I used to work in personal lending. Many banks don’t want to claim against probate for individual loans under 10k & will write them off. I advise you just to do what cab said - put the death notification up and let people come to you. There’s no need to be calling up these large institutions

But that isn't true is it? There is an estate. Saying there isn't is fraud.

Debts have to be paid in a certain order, places like HMRC being at or near the top of the list, you can't just pay OVO because money is owed, there may not be enough for them after more important creditors are paid. I put the ad in the Gazette for both my parents , it is the place where the DWP look to check if they are owed money from any overpaid benefits, DWP are probably near top of list for debts like HMRC.

You quoted my username by mistake I think WeetabixTowels

I worked in debt recovery for a local authority for a few years.

Often when we had a client pass away we would put our claim into the estate as part of the probate and distribution of assets more often than not we were put to the bottom of the pile of creditors, or no money to cover and so we would write off the debt but we would require proof that there were no funds left within the estate.

The £16k would be classed as his estate and so would need to be used to pay for funeral first (which you say is covered) and then any other creditors. Any funds remaining at the end could then be distributed to NOK