Is this normal? Regarding probate and inheritance.

[Cydonia]

I’ll try and keep it brief and to the point....
My father passed away at the end of last year. He didn’t have a will, and my sibling lives abroad so we appointed a solicitor to do the probate. I’m the executor of the estate. There is a property ( owned outright, currently on the market ) and some other money from bank accounts and shares, no debt.
I’m aware these things take time, but probate was granted at the end of March and nothing has happened since. Have barely heard from the solicitors, even considering lockdown they don’t seem to be doing anything? Said they were going to check the shares and they would have to be sold, no further word on this. Said we can’t have the money from the estate until the property has sold.
Does this sound about right? We were told to expect it to take a while as no will, but I think really it should be pretty straightforward. Direct split between sibling and I, no debts to settle, no inheritance tax to pay, nobody with claims to the estate.
I want to move house but would need the money for a deposit. We were only told recently that the property would need to sell before any money was released, if I had known that from the beginning I would’ve put it on the market sooner. As now I think we will owe council tax on it?
Anyone else been through similar, does this sound like the norm for this kind of thing?

Thanks Bloody that’s helpful. To be honest, it’s so long since we were actually in the solicitors discussing it I think I’ve just forgotten what they said! You’re right, I remember something about the house being part of the estate and the estate all had to be complete before it could be divided. I think I’m just obsessing about moving because it wouldn’t really have been possible otherwise and I’m trying to find something positive in all the shite! Need to slow down and sort the other stuff out first.

My father died recently and rather than pay upwards of £5k and wait a minimum of six months for a solicitor to do something, I applied for probate myself, there not being any will.
All of my fathers matters taken care of, tax, council tax, all other services etc, apart from banks, though they will allow me access to funds to settle items. Filled in inheritance tax forms and awaiting probate papers from govt office to complete rest of his estate, including release of bank balances. Expect to complete all matters by end of the year, including final probate reports to govt offices by end of the year.
Only delay was getting my father cremated, with everything having to be done over the phone, and email.
Would advise anyone to do probate yourself, as it is easy to complete although solicitors etc try to make it sound complicated so that you will employ them.
Would continue to chase up solicitors as they work for 'you'.

There are a few things here

Having a date when probate was granted when there was no will needs some clarification.

You certainly need an update on progress from the solicitor.

Once letters of administration have been granted, the estate can be distributed. In your situation, that probably means that the house needs to be put on the market and actually, you know, a buyer found and actually sold. Has an estate agent been instructed ? By whom?

I would agree with PP suggestion that you take control of that process yourself. Then instruct a solicitor as usual for the sale.

As an executor, It's not usual to distribute the estate until you know how much there is, for example what legal etc fees will be required to sell the house.

If there are only the two of you to inherit, though, once you have letters of administration, I see no reason why you shouldn't share the liquid assets now and then split the proceeds of the house sale when they become available

The only risk would be if the costs of selling the house are greater than any equity available from the house sale.

Inform yourself about what needs to be done at each stage. I'm not sure the solicitors are doing a good job. I have done several estates, always need a solicitor at some point but the process itself is essentially administrative.

If you can work out what needs to be done you will be in a better position to chase up the solicitor. We are still waiting for probate to be granted on one estate, still the lovely solicitors reply's to any question within 24hrs. If it will take longer to get an answer, they send a holding email.

All the best.

Thanks. At the beginning the solicitor said they don’t charge a flat fee, but rather an hourly rate for the time spent on the case. I think they estimated about £2,000 so it didn’t seem too bad. I have done quite a bit of it myself, particularly at the beginning, but everything seems to have ground to a halt.
The house has been on the market since June so that is all up and running. It’s in the town where I live luckily so I’ve been dealing with all that.
I have a feeling they will just tell me they have to wait for the house to sell, but I will ring for a progress report anyway. The only other thing not sorted was the shares. We wondered if we could keep them and split them between us but solicitor said she didn’t think they could do that, they would have to be sold and the money split. Trouble is, they are in a pharmaceutical company and had dropped in value but are now on the rise again. I’d hate to have to sell them now when they’re worth less! But this is another thing that the solicitor said she would find out for me then I haven’t heard anything!

solicitor said she didn’t think they could do that, they would have to be sold and the money split. Trouble is, they are in a pharmaceutical company and had dropped in value but are now on the rise again. I’d hate to have to sell them now when they’re worth less! But this is another thing that the solicitor said she would find out for me then I haven’t heard anything!

This is why I would really encourage you to pick up the reins again as executor. You have no leverage with the solicitors, to get them to do anything. It might be easier for them to distribute everything together but does that really suit you best?

Our solicitors asked us whether we wanted to keep the shares, then when on to explain that for estate purposes they would keep their validation as at probate ( we had a will) and so to point out the implications of keeping v selling.

If you sell now, you split the loss v probate value between the beneficiaries. There may be other gains elsewhere to offset the overall value of the estate If you keep them, you don't Know whether they will rise or fall in value in future....

So, even though there may be money in bank accounts they will only give that money to beneficiaries once all monies from the estate are ready to be divided.

Not always true, my DC inherited from a large estate that was primarily cash, with a house worth about 10-12% of estate value. The solicitors called all the cash, shares etc in, as soon as they got probate and made an interim payment to all the beneficiaries, approx 70% of overall payment. That was approx 6 months after death, and 6/7 months before final payment was made. They also made an interim IHT payment to HMRC.

Once the house had sold, all bills accounted for and final IHT calculated and paid, the remainder of the money was distributed.

Similar with my mums estate, although DB and I were executors so I did it all and it was below IHT threshold. As soon as we got probate, the cash was paid out into a bank account of mine and I sent half to DB, plus the shares were transferred into my name (DB didn’t want any). This was approx 2-3 months before the house sale completed and we got the proceeds of that.

I would chase up solicitors and ask them to speed up closing bank accounts and releasing the cash funds. If you don’t get any joy, go over the solicitor’s head to a partner and make a formal complaint. I almost had to do that regarding the speed with which the solicitor in my DC inheritance was doing the work for us to take over as trustees of DD money (she was 16 and the only beneficiary under 18). Snails pace doesn’t quite describe how slow he worked!

Shares DO Not have to be sold! My mum had shares in a number of companies from the days of privatisation (her and dad worked for BT and B gas respectively so got free shares).

My DB didn’t want them, so I got them transferred to me and he got equivalent value as additional cash.

Thanks again for the input, I will contact the solicitors again on Monday. While I appreciate that a lot of their work will be held up by waiting for others to get back to them I do feel their communication has been pretty shocking. I wonder if we’ve got our wires crossed over what they think I’m doing, or what they think we want, because of the change in solicitor half way through. Though I must say, when I’ve asked them things ( both solicitors ) for example about the shares, I’ve been surprised by how little they seemed to know. It was always “oh I’m not sure, I’ll have to look into that” and then I’d not hear about it again!