Dealing with finances after a death - Santander

[Tinkobell]

My poor FIL has just died after struggling with a sudden illness. No POA in place and sadly illness took hold too quickly to set one up. He has a Santander savings account (not joint with MIL) which a load of direct debits paying all utility bills. The account has a decent sum in it and is not likely to dry up too soon.
I'm afraid we've heard pretty negative things about Santander being over zealous in these situations and freezing accounts. I'm seeking any experience or advice to ensure as smooth as possible a transfer of the account to my MIL and ensuring that her essential bills carry on getting paid. This account does hold most of their savings; which are all left to her in the will. We don't want her to get tangled in needless red tape!!!

My experience of Lloyds after dh's death was unequivocally positive, but I must say we both had accounts there including a joint account which was the bills one.

In general I would say most organisations are petrified of bad publicity around treating a grieving widow badly, and most have specialist bereavement people who the main call centres will put you through to. Really I had very few problems at all.

As soon as you have any kind of death certificates I would make an appointment in branch with Santander. It would seem like a good idea to run some kind of file with all the paperwork you can find including the death certificate copies, contact details for all the utilities and information for all bank accounts. I say this because I didn't do it I did however have a large pile of 'Admin To Do' and whenever I felt able to I used to just pick up the next thing off the pile and do that.

You will need lots of stamps, envelopes, and at least ten copies of the death certificate.

Oh I also thoroughly recommend the 'Tell Us Once' service for government departments, it worked very well for us and things like getting the single-person discount on council tax happened without a moment's issue.

Thanks @PatPphoenix.....I'm sorry for your loss but appreciative of your practical tips. We thought x 5 copies of the Death Cert.....but I will tell her to double it! With the bank, surely a solicitor would need to produce something legal to verify that FIL has left his assets to MIL as per his Will before any access to his monies would be permitted? It's THIS stage that would worry me....how long it would take etc etc.....for this reason alone I am thinking that maybe it's better for her to keep schtum with the bank until all the legalities are sorted out perhaps?

Am sorry for your loss💐I lost my lovely mum 8 weeks ago and my elderly dad wanted to close and transfer over her bank account and ISA with Barclays into his own account. I must say the process was really quick and easy. I made an appointment in branch by phone and took dad with all the admin. Within a few days after this, it was all done and he even got a really kind letter from the branch expressing their condolences. I expect Santander will be pretty similar and that bank staff are used to the urgency required and also mindful of any distress the whole thing can cause to relatives. The tell me once service is also great.
Wishing you all the best.

Is there a copy of the will anywhere - that should do? You don't specifically need a solicitor. It depends a bit on the bank and the amount to be transferred. If the amount is less than £50000 (we were less than a tenth of that!) some will just transfer the money. But maybe they had to have a look at the will, I can't remember. I had a photocopy in our file which was enough IIRC.

What I am certain of is that there is a definite clearing of the seas effect when it's a bereavement. DH had some random bill which I'd never heard of arrive - I said could they explain more, that was about 8 months ago and I think they've just written it off. Nobody wants to annoy a new widow.