to be disappointed/upset about £ left in will?

[carocaro]

Got a cheque today £3,500 from my Grandma.

Estate was over £250,000.

Her son's, my Uncles I presume were left the most, the same Uncles who did not speak to her for decades at a time when they fell out. PLus a few other friends, no other grandchildren, as out of the 11 she had me and my sister were the only one's who ever saw her.

My Dad died ten years ago and she always stated that me and my sister would get my Dad's share. Apparently not. Why I don't know and never will.

I am upset because it seems as is my Dad meant nothing, despite the fact that he was the only one who ever did anything for her and the only son she ever liked - that from her own mouth!

I am disappointed at the small amount, of course I am grateful and £ should not reflect someone's level of love, but it just seems very harsh and unfair.

But it was her decision and there is nothing I can do about it. Must suck it up and move on.

Thanks emsyj. I was just writing a long post about inheritance tax (IHT) and gifting and lost it. You've said it much more succinctly than I did

Morris you can only gift £3000 per person, per year without it still counting as part of the estate of the person making the gift (there are exceptions to this, for example marriage allows you to gift more in some circumstances).

As an example, if you were to give your sister half and then not survive 7 years the gift would count as part of your estate and may give an IHT liability where one wouldn't have existed before.

The other advantage of a DOV is that it makes it really clear what has been done so no-one can come back later and say the estate wasn't divided fairly. It is possible that if a secret family turned up, for example, who had a claim to the estate the single beneficary could be ordered by a court to give some of the estate over and the person who received the gift instead of a bequest would not be liable to hand over any of their "share".

I have never seen a will that provides for an executor to take a % fee for administering an estate, ever. It is not a concept that I have ever heard of either. Usually if you appoint a bank or a solicitor as your executor they will charge fees and often banks will charge a % of the estate value as their fee (banks are 99% of the time vastly more expensive than solicitors by the way) but have never ever heard of an executor being 'compensated' in this way for performing the role. If the testator has appointed a professional executor such as a bank or solicitor, the will normally includes provisions for them to charge their reasonable fees, but if the executor is someone who is a family member etc then they may well receive a gift under the will too just because they are someone close to and trusted by the testator, but that isn't always the case. I have often seen clients appoint totally independent executors (whom they know and trust) who don't benefit under the will at all.

Having a family member administer the estate CAN be cheaper, but if the estate is very valuable then it can be hard work for them and they may miss out on tax planning opportunities that a solicitor or bank would have been able to advise on. This happened to a friend of mine - her father didn't take advice when her mother died and as a result they missed out on a very obvious tax planning opportunity and ended up paying substantial IHT on her father's subsequent death.

Also, in my experience, if a solicitor has been appointed as an executor and the beneficiaries agree that they would rather conduct the administration of the estate themselves, the solicitor will usually step down to allow this - unless he or she is aware that the appointment was particularly desired by the deceased e.g. because they didn't think the beneficiaries would be able to administer the estate without falling out every 5 minutes. I have never come across a situation where a solicitor appointed as executor has refused to give up his appointment as executor if requested to do so.

em is right and don't underestimate the amount of work involved in doing it. I spent 100 hours on my father's estate. I didn't mind doing that and I knew what I was doing but it was about 5x as much time as I expected.

Ok that makes sense. Thanks for explaining it.

Interesting emsy.

The estate i have experience with (where the executor received, i think 2% of the total estate value in addition to her beneficiary share) was not in the UK. The estate also had to pay solicitor's fees associated with necessary legal filings.

Maybe what is standard varies from country to country.

Imagine so. Inheritance and probate rules are vastly different from country to country, there's no 'common feature' really and some things that are very normal in other jurisdictions are unheard of here. It's also relatively unusual to split estates on a % basis or to leave X% of your residual estate to a particular beneficiary here - but not aware of any reason for this, possibly it's just a stylistic thing.

Justanothermanicmummy said
'JosieZ if all beneficiaries agree you can change the will when your mother dies. You have to all sign a deed of variation but you can change it.

Obviously when it comes to it your brother may not want to give up his extra share... but it's all academic at the moment and your mother might change her will again.'

Thanks, I'd forgotten that.

Everyone knows about the change to the will and are resigned to the vagaries of mum's feelings.

When I go I would like to give more to anyone who gives of their time to my care when old but it does risk problems between siblings.