Think DH Mothers inheritance has been defrauded.

[Mixitupmonday]

My husbands mother died 10 yrs ago.
She had lived in a council house all her life and had no known assets.
Something weird happened just before she died. A neighbour mentioned she had 'won ' the lottery.
DHs long lost sister had just moved back in with their mother and told DH that mum was 'demented' and to take no notice.
Mum died . Was in a care home before she died . After she died SIL asked if I would stop the pension. (My area of work). I did this. But DWP told me she also had Attendance Allowance in payment. I knew this was either wrong (or mum was paying own care home fees) . I rang and checked with care home and they confirmed Mum was a self funded @ £1100 a week !! (She has been there for 10 months.

DH asked his SIL if there was money as mum was paying care fees and she said 'mum had an small insurance policy that was now all gone..
DH asked for a Will. SIL produced a DIY Will (which I still have saying ) ... I MIL leave everything to DS1, DS2 and DD1 (but fails to mention DH)..

Six months passed and no probate . (Because apparently there was no estate). DH fell out with all siblings over it as they were obviously hiding stuff from him. Hasn't spoken to any of them since the few months after she died.
It has ALWAYS pissed me off. I know SIL got a POA before mother died . Pretty sure she just transferred mums funds into her account and divided by the three siblings. DH is a MUCH younger ''menopause baby' and has never had a close relationship with them.
As I say , it has grated on me over the years but something happened today and I have just been sent a picture of SIL house. Checking on Zoopla it was bought 6 months after mums death for 435k (SIL was a warden in a care home at time of mums death with a flat that went with the job ..

Is there a time limit on looking at this stuff ? Is there ANY way to find out how much mum left. I thought anything over 30k had to go to probate. . It's just so wrong. The 'Will' is obviously forged . Didn't even get mums name right as she was one of those people who had a first name she never used. !

Or do I just need to let the whole thing go. ? ...

Who witnessed the Will? Can you get verification your mil signed it in front of them?

The next door neighbour. One died of dementia soon after the other died 3 years ago.

I wonder if you can approach the court of protection to find out if the accounts of your mil were filed by her poa but I don’t know if they do this or would allow you to view them. Then you could see her bank details. Perhaps contact them for advice
www.gov.uk/courts-tribunals/court-of-protection

Which part of the UK are you all?

England TrueCrimeFan

Many thanks bionicnemonic .
There is also the possibility that MIL simply gave DIL a third party authority over her accounts.
Any banking experts out there ?

There seems to be a shocking lack of regulation and secrecy regarding inheritance/beneficiaries and absolutely nothing to stop someone getting their slightly muddled /profoundly demented relative signing a third party authority to enable another to administer their bank account .
Then when they die, (or before) emptying the account to their own and just pretending the person died with very little or nothing at all.
Even easier if you forge a DIY Will naming yourself as Executor. It seems 'Executor' is sacrosanct and there is no means to check them when they simply say there is no money as the bank will only deal with the Executor !

Can't imagine how much IHT the revenue misses every year by people just helping themselves - especially now dementia is so prevalent.

Check probate
Tax man wants his cut and it’ll go through probate with or without a will if there is money to be taxed

If mil lacked capacity (such as having dementia) then legally the person handling the financial side of things has to have a poa.
www.moneyadviceservice.org.uk/en/articles/if-the-person-you-want-to-help-has-lost-mental-capacity

Yes I am aware how things SHOULD work.. but when DIL moved in with MIL (v soon after the apparent 'win' .. she was already quite muddled.
I suspect she didn't worry with a registered POA . Ten years ago the POA rules were not as stringent. (2008 to be precise)

However , if as I suspect she simply got mum to sign her as an 'authorised signature' what is there to say that she couldn't simply empty the account and put in to hers. Not bothering with probate and all that tiresome administrative stuff. ?

Who would know. ? There are no checks between the probate registry, deaths and bank accounts. So no one would ever no.

I'm sure my SIL is not the first to deal with inheritance this way . But there is no means to check. Literally nothing I can find.

Perhaps your best bet would be to try to involve HMRC by snitching her up. If substantial amounts of IHT have gone unpaid then they might be prepared to investigate, and their investigatory powers are terrifying. Although whether banks keep records going back more than six years, even for the taxman's benefit, I'm doubtful about. I also don't know how much evidence HMRC would want before starting to dig.

Did other siblings make significant purchases shortly after the death?

How was the council rent being paid? Housing benefit? Her own funds?

Which bank did she use? Have you cantacted their fraud department as to you concern that large amounts of money where removed from her account?

There’s always someone who will do stuff like this you need to try and investigate it as much as you can sounds v dodgy to me

People are greedy and so stupid things to cheat others out of inheritance

Problem is trying to find the end of the thread to unravel this mystery.
We don't know mums bank. She never had one as far as we knew.
Got her pension and dads (when alive) from post office.
Dad worked as a labourer until he retired in the 80s. Got paid in brown paper envelope.

As this is probably fraud . Would the police look at it after this time ?

There's FA to stop anyone thieving the lot and DD knew it, by the sounds of it. Theoretically it's very Illegal, but you can't be caught.

If you want to shaft DH's family, call HMRC and tell them DD ignored probate, and MIL's assets were over the limit. it might be too long ago for them to act. The police will do 0.

You won't see any money from the will, forged or not. It's impossible to prove a will is forged/undue influence/etc etc and everyone knows it.

It's also impossible to stop someone with POA stealing unless the victim is still alive, in which case nowadays you can grass them up to the Court of Protection.

You can't stop an executor from stealing everything once someone's died. Well, unless you have cast-iron proof of all the assets and threaten them with the police unless they hand them over to the rightful owners.

If there was a lottery win

Then the money would have been handed over

This wouldn’t have been cash- it would have had to have been put into an account and it would have had to be in the winners name... they are strict

Where did the money come from to pay for the nursing home? Again not cash each month

If there was a lottery win and the sister in law had any sense she would have claimed it in her own name (by presenting the winning ticket as hers) rather than that of her mother. Then the money would never have passed through the mother's estate.

Overall I think that after ten years, with key witnesses dead, bank records likely to be non-existent even at the bank, and fairly flimsy speculative evidence to suggest foul play, you're unlikely to get very far. Again, HMRC is the agency most likely to take an interest because they would have an interest of possibly several hundred thousand pounds missing IHT themselves. But overall I don't rate your chances of success unfortunately.

Why don't you just write to sil and say information has come to light that your mil left a substantial amount of money and no will and you will be informing the HMRC that they have possibly been defrauded by whoever inherited the money.
Then sit back and wait for a reaction.
You may never get anything but the gov't will want there cut.

*their

I think French has a great plan, it’s unlikely that you’ll be able unravel this so throwing in a large bluff would be very interesting 🧐

If it’s been grating on you, it’ll answer some questions 😉

Supersimkin2 I think you are absolutely spot on. I just can't believe it's quite so easy to filch someone else's money and there being absolutely NO checks on where there money goes.
It relies ENTIRELY on the executor/administrator self reporting AND being honest.

How much every year is fiddled this way.
So what EVERYONE could do is put their relatives money in their own account. (Via a simple 3rd party authority when relative gets a bit frail or with their consent if they are equally complicit in helping their beneficiaries avoid tax)
Then when relative dies, you simply split it with all involved. By passing HMRC completely.
There seems to be absolutely NOTHING to stop anyone doing this. Just keep it all away from annoying solicitors who will insist on playing by the rules , but otherwise who on earth would know ?

Not sure what the house buying rules were like 10 years ago but we bought our first house last year and as part of anti money laundering checks we had to provide source of wealth information about how we had enough money to pay the deposit.

I used an inheritance to do this so provide a copy of the will etc.

This might be a way of doing this but not sure how you would track back this legally?

unfortunately, in practical terms, looks unlikely you can do anything.
but interesting that MIL was not represented as having no assets re going into care home. if she had no assets and SS determined af= greed she needed residential care, then that would have to come from public funds, ie the council pays.
so on the one hand, she had no assets to bequeath, but had had enough to pay v high care home fees. possible her asssets had been gobbled up by the fees, but then usually contact is made with SS to assess as needing public assistance to continue in care home/ be transferred to a cheaper one. bearing in mind that private payers pay a higher rate to subsidise those paid for by the council. another anomaly.

anyway I think you better try and forget it all, else you'll only make yourself ill. be ultra clear, take good advice in your own family's financial planning.

I like the idea above of writing to SIL
Sounds like you/your DH has nothing to lose in terms of the relationship.

But I would also consider talking to the police as you are concerned about fraud/financial abuse of a vulnerable person.
If they took it forward they could get access to bank statements to see what happened to any money

However the problem could be that if some money was moved before MIL passed away, SIL could just say that it was done with mil’s consent and now she has passed away it would be difficult to prove she lacked capacity to make an informed choice.

there being absolutely NO checks on where there money goes

There are checks. HMRC can look through bank statements, pension details, etc. to track down lifetime gifts that may be subject to IHT. However, as with a lot of tax, they rely on random checks (possibly using systems that detect suspicious behaviour) and people informing them of anything suspicious. They don't have enough resources to check everything.