dying without a will - tranferrring money -bank accounts - please HELP

[Ladyemem]

Sadly my mother in law passed away and my father in law had to go into care home. She did not leave a will. Problem is we need to pay for his care and all the money is in her bank account (40,000) which is now frozen. Can we not use her money to pay for his care? we thought we could just transfer money into his account but not as easy as that. can any advise please. Just been told it would cost us £1800 to transfer the money from her to his account. surely his cant be right? account is with barclays.

Will the care home not give you "credit" whilst probate is sorted out?

Hi there , I have a little experience from working in a bank but was not in the probate dept . I learnt from helping customers I saw face to face that funds would be released to next of Kin to pay for funeral expenses but only direct to funeral company . All direct debits and standing orders would also be frozen . May I ask though ,was the care home was being paid from the mother in laws account via direct debit standing order whilst she was alive ?
If so it may be worth explaing this to Barclays and as its for father in law (married I assume ) he would be the auto beneficiary without a will ?!
Finally it would not cost anything to transfer the funds to another account unless you had a same day transfer which is around £35.00 pounds (chaps payment) I have to say though that once an account has gone through probate a cheque is normally sent but I'm sure a transfer could be requested .
The whole process should take a max of four weeks for a "straight forward " case and if you speak to Barclays probate dept I would like to think that they would be able to offer advice
X

funeral expences paid for years ago so no worrys there. 2 days after mother died we had to place father in law into care home as she was his main carer. We have not made any payments to the care home yet. all this happened last week. We did explain to barclays that father in law would be auto beneficary without a will. all we want to do is transfer money from her account to his. Yes they were married for 60 years! Not sure why we have been quoted £1800 to sort this out.confused :S

Have you shown them the death certificate? They will need some documentary evidence. When we dealt with my father's death four years ago much of the money was in joint accounts, so all that needed doing there was to issue a new cheque book in mum's name only.

The bank and building societies were willing to release what was in small accounts with only the death certificate as proof and mum signing some forms. The larger amounts needed us to get letter of administration (equivalent of going through probate, for case when there isn't a will.) It was only when they had a copy of one of those that they could transfer the money.

The HRMC website should have details of what you need to do to get letters of administration. As to what the bank will do I guess that's mostly down to their own internal procedures.

I should add, we didn't have to pay any of the banks any thing to do this.

Sorry , how long ago did your mother in law pass away ? When you say funeral expenses were paid for years ago do you mean a pre paid funeral plan was in place or that she passed away years ago and Barclays have taken years to sort this !
Diddymary is right about showing death cert but as I said as soon as Barclays have recieved all the information death cert , copy of will (if there is one) etc it should only take a matter of weeks to transfer funds to next of kin . It could be that funds are released before the next payment of care home fees leave your father in laws acc !
I would speak with the probate dept direct and explain the situation and ask for timescales etc and keep in touch with them to make sure things are happening when they should x