Calling fellow cockroach cafe … um graduates? Going through probate- advice and support thread

[thesandwich]

Hello all, wondered if any of the cockroach clan now sadly dealing with the sadmin would welcome a thread for support dealing with probate/ house sales and all other joys?
id welcome any recommendations re executor accounts at banks etc?

We're just starting the process for DMum's estate. The paperwork is a bit confusing understatement.

Mum had Dad's IT threshold (Dad's estate was about £200k, everything left to DMum.) DMum's estate is about £530k - assuming there will be no IT liability on this......... It's so difficult to wade through the varying websites, and requirements seemed to change at the end of 2022.

DMum's estate is purely money in banks, National Savings and ISAs, will we need to complete IT paperwork or just apply for probate?

Just having all the paperwork in a limited space is a good start!
Car and house insurance was "interesting" (and still is - we had to find a specialist insurer because Mum's partner was left right of residence in the house in her will but technically the will trust owns it - ok once we'd found them).

Hello @funnelfan i wish I’d been a joint signatory on mums bank account as others have said. Would have been much easier.
also having a list of all accounts/ bonds/ building societies etc.

thank you

I was probably here under a different name, but this board helped greatly in dad’s last weeks. I fed him wine and tried to take him for a joyride 🏎️ ;)

That’s what I don’t understand
so far even the DWP has paid me his missing 1 week of pension, direct to my account and without grant of probate

so do I need an estate account or separate bank account at all?

dad had a rental property, and agent has after I produced Will and death cert, and speaking to their solicitors (& me to mine) started paying me direct so I can authorise maintenance payments. Until then I kept telling them to hold rent so they could do so. Tenants are lovely and are staying, so I didn’t want anything to go wrong and not be fixed promptly.

If you are the only beneficiary and there’s no IHT then no, I don’t think you need a separate account.

The purpose is to be able to show your workings to the tax man or other beneficiaries.

As for planning

i wish he’d allowed me to help more with his paperwork before/after it went to pot with dementia.

it was all so organised by him, a RIP folder with lists of accounts, wishes, passwords. Then he undid most of it between confusion and paranoia

I had been joint signatory on a lot of accounts but he undid that too.

also if parent has a burial plot, check that church are still accepting new burials. Or if the plot/space was agreed in writing before it closed. I had to find ancient Church paperwork to prove his place. Which was very unwelcome.

and I wish he’d told me who he wanted certain family non valuable things to go to. And let me clear out the rest.

there is no value at all in his ‘antique’ furniture. I’ve ended up paying to have it removed or given it away. Brown large items are not in fashion, even if ancient and made of nice wood, antiques experts said value less that same weight of firewood.

and I’m most importantly I wish I had NOT told his bank about death until I’d gone online and printed statements, used their search function to look up things for tax return, etc. I told them as soon as I had death cert and never imagined I’d lose historic viewing (not new transactions- I knew that would stop) access the online accounts he had with one bank when I had POA

however the funeral directors were amazing. The priest so kind too. I did everything quickly for my religion and foreign relatives travel dates , not his religion, and while priest was surprised, they all accommodated my wishes.

I had my eulogy in draft form for years, just added to as necessary after every hospital visit and drink or two - dad was a —dare devil— spirited and independent so his death has been nearly expected many times over the years, only made worse by dementia, where he didn’t think he was old.

Thank you

taxes I can do
IHT is due but again I’m on it
And it’s just me, so I don’t need to prove any other beneficiary

I was very glad for mum's foresight in making one of her current accounts a joint account. It was the one that all the utilities went out of so I didn't have to fret about all the direct debits stopping while the account was frozen. It meant I could do her shopping during the pandemic and order things for her on the internet.

I was also glad that she'd made her funeral wishes very clear to her remaining family, I wasn't looking forward to telling them that there wasn't going to be a funeral. I was going to have a service until I found out that she'd told them that there would be nothing at all, I would have appreciated her having told me that.

Having this experience recently, my personal view is get a solicitor to do it all.

My Dad sorted my Nan's probate, which was incredibly simple, and even that took 9 months of stress.

My uncle is sorting his father's, and is finding it a nightmare, and until recently he was a probate solicitor!

In my case, we had excellent solicitors. I still had to do various bits of paperwork, and organise the sale of her house (all in the middle of Covid, and Mum lived the other end of the country) but it was money incredibly well spent. Didn't need to pay up front, just taken from the final inheritance.

I appreciate it won't be appropriate in all cases for a multitude of reasons, but it takes away a lot of stress. Trying to do something very technical, at a time when you're likely grieving, can add to the stress and lead to unintentional errors, as one PP has sadly experienced.

There is an Industry grouping called 'Solicitors for the Elderly'- worth getting one from that group to assist with any pre (eg LPA) or post death issues.

This ^^

Paying for help isn’t weakness
Neither is asking for help

And to everyone missing the DFs today gentle hugs

I am weeping, clearing the final things before I complete on his home
My amazing friends have helped me, and it’s just the last push for fingers crossed next week.

Then back to the never ending paperwork search. Why did he keep every letter sent or received?

Thank you all again for your input and information- really useful. Tomorrow is mums funeral- please send me positive thoughts to help me through the eulogy I really want to give- ( I do have back up on hand)

Good luck today @thesandwich
Hope the sun is shining for her your eulogy will be beautiful, even if someone else has to read it for you

Good luck today @thesandwich

Thank you all. It all went very well- a bit of a strange start as we were after a service for a biker, who had hundreds of mourners, cavalcades and bikers all revving their engines and had to be encouraged to move on by our lovely minister friend.
the sun shone, I managed my eulogy, and we all had a lovely time catching up with eachother. Mum would loved it.

Well done @thesandwich. I bet today you will feel really wiped. You are in a new place from this morning as a line has been finally drawn. Be kind to yourself and gather your strength before you throw yourself back into the sadmin.

My twopence worth is that everything takes five times longer than you want it to happen.

In six months I've managed to have DM's local Council confirm in writing that although they had a 'charge' over her property, financially she/we owe them nothing and the charge can be removed. I've also managed to submit DM'a final accounts to the OPG and had them approved so I no longer have to deal with them.

But now everything is sitting with the £250/hr solicitor and £225/hr paralegal and this might take a considerable period of time to move forward. I'm thinking nine months. Meanwhile DM's house badly needs its external windows painting.

Glad it went well @thesandwich . My overriding memory of my mum’s funeral is thinking how much she would have enjoyed it and that she should have been there to see everyone. Which is kind of strange really.

my tip for probate is one I was given by a friend and similar to one already given about not telling the bank of the death until you have all the statements etc. It’s to say go and stop all direct debits if you have POA (technically it stops at death but if you’ve not reported the death you can still stop transactions). My friend didn’t do this and spent months trying to get refunds for services that weren’t delivered as a result of death and this could all have been prevented if the direct debits had been stopped.

@thesandwich My funeral director booked a double slot at the crematorium to avoid that biker scenario (this was for my husband) as he said that people would want to chat afterwards and it would take ages to clear. He wasn't wrong.

The funeral is the last point where you're on display, afterwards everyone else returns to their lives and you have to start reshaping your own. I'm glad that you didn't have today's weather because that doesn't encourage standing and catching up.

Thank you all. We did have a double slot which helped massively. A single one would have been impossible!
and thank you for the advice.

Hello, another question- I am an executor and a beneficiary- one of 4. The others live 2ish hours away- all accounts and house are 5 mins from me. I am retired, the others not. I also think I can deal with most of it, maybe need a bit of specialist tax advice, but has anyone experience of claiming costs and also charging a ( low ) rate for their time to the estate?

Commiserations to all who are here. My dm passed away last November and her house etc is left solely to me( only child). I'm in Ireland so it's probably a bit different but I got my solicitor to deal with probate and she's been brilliant. There have been the initial contact with utilities etc that I had to do but everything else is in her hands. My main problem is , that I find it so difficult to go into her house to clear it out. She lived 5 mins from me but I have only been there a handful of times. Her chair, remote control, rosary beads etc, are like she has just gone to the bathroom. It still even smells like her. I've roped in my dh and teenage kids but there is only so much they can do. I need to go through all her photos, books, paperwork, photos, clothes etc and it's so difficult. I go there full of intentions to get stuck in, but when I walk into the kitchen, bedroom etc it's like a flood of emotion comes up my throat and Im frozen ! My husband says there is no hurry but I have to get stuck in instead of putting it off! We probably will sell the house so when probate comes through I'll have to get moving😪. It's so difficult.

Not entirely the same @thesandwich but when I completed the annual accounts for DM, as guardian, the Office of Public Guardian, once they had approved then the OPG made a suggestion for the amount of recompense I could be awarded for my time. It was about £1000 each time and I always took it.

Thank you@Mum5net v useful.
and much sympathy @AnSionnachGlic im not looking forward to that.

@thesandwich Your search term would be "what expenses can lay executors charge?". Unless it says otherwise in the will you cannot charge for your time unless this is something that you do professionally. You might want to check that you're on the same page as your siblings with how you approach the house clearance. The quick way is where you pay someone to empty and clean, those costs would be chargeable to the estate. The cheap way involves endless hours of your time. Unless your sibs are going to be there washing windows alongside you then I'd suggest getting the professionals in.

@AnSionnachGlic I cleared my childhood home in the last 12 months, mum had been in residential care for nine months before that. I hated going through the door because she wasn't there. I took someone with me whenever possible, one person cut the grass while the other filled the bin, the boot of the car and the backseat of the car. It was a race to get out of there. I sorted through it in my own home, I had a washing pile, a charity box, a metal recycling pile and a box of not-now-but-later. I left it in the car and brought it into the house one box/bag at a time so it didn't feel such a massive job. Once the car was empty, if my bin wasn't full we went and did it again. I did the easy things first, my father's clothes, the tins on the kitchen shelf and worked up to the hard things. At the end I had someone in to take away the beds and freezer because I couldn't have moved them myself.

@thesandwich
My relative claimed travel costs for getting to and from the house to clear it as it was a 40 mile round trip and the other executors who were more local had decided it should be done in person rather than getting the professionals in to empty it. Think she produced petrol receipts and kept records of when she'd been.

I don't think you can claim for your time as it doesn't sound like you're incurring costs eg having to take unpaid time off work or having to pay for extra childcare or something?

It's worth looking into getting professional house clearance to do it- they don't cost that much, they do it quickly and efficiently and certainly the ones we used to clear a purchase kept any paperwork, ID type stuff to one side for us.

Thanks all.