Can we do probate and settle this estate ourselves?

[canwedothis]

Can I first say that I know that professionals charge high fees and its because they are trained and highly skilled, and I am a professional myself. This is not to knock solicitors -

However... a person has passed away. They had 1 bank account, and 1 house with tenants in as the person was in a care home. The house is well under the IHT level as is the whole estate. They were in a home since 2019 so no household bills. They had no tech so no online shopping accounts etc, literally nothing owed.

There is 1 creditor, the local authority, which is attached to the house.

3 GDC with small bequest

2 DC who are executors and share the remainder of the estate once house sold and care home paid.

They have been quoted £7-£9.5K by their solicitor to obtain probate and settle the estate, plus fees on top of that for probate, notices, searches etc.

Am I crazy for thinking that this is extortionate for the amount of work involved? They have been quoted £6K by another firm.

As far as I am aware they could do it themselves, so I said that I would post on here for opinions for them. Things to do:

apply for probate and wait for it to come through - can do online
open executors bank account
give notice to tenants (offer them first refusal on house purchase)
put house on market, engage solicitor for that sale
do a credit check on experian or similar?
put notice in gazette for any further creditors
wait for house to sell, pay relevant agents commission,
pay local authority the care home fees
do final tax return for rental income, check CGT etc
pay GDC
split balance between 2 DC.

Have I missed anything? It seems like a very simple estate to deal with, but prices have doubled in just 4 years since a family member died. They had 8 beneficiaries, half the house was in a trust. so those fees were around £4K for a more complicated case.

I'd definitely say do it yourselves, assuming the two executors are able to work together.

I've done it twice (jointly with a sibling) and it was pretty simple.

The last one was a few years ago so it's possible that things might have changed, but we didn't need to open an executors bank account. The bank just converted the existing account into one.

If it's not too late, I'd make sure you get a few copies of the death certificate.

The only thing I can thing of that you might have missed is to notify any private pension and/or life insurance providers. If I remember rightly DWP will be told automatically.

Good luck.

Thanks. They did wonder if the bank account could just be changed over.

They have notified private pensions and DWP already, and have a small amount of Attendants Allowance to repay.

They already have several copies of the death certificate.

They could definitely work together well.

There is also a Government service called Tell us once - you put the deceased details into the system and it tells all the relevant departments. (I realise this is not executing the will but it is a helpful service).

Yes, they have used the Tell Us Once service so pensions and benefits stopped

This is interesting as a relative of DH's has recently died and we were discussing sorting things out ourselves. As you say, it seems relatively straightforward and would save a huge amount of money.

However, in our case, DH is an executor and the deceased's accountant is also an executor. The accountant wants to do it himself and charge about £6K! DH says he can do for nothing but not sure what the legal implications of this are if there are two executors.

Sorry, perhaps I should start a new thread!

I did probate myself. One house owned outright, 2 private pensions as well as DWP, regular household bills to settle, 3 bank accounts, ISAs, life insurance, and some share holdings. Also claiming allowance from deceased spouse.

The hardest part was filling in the HMRC forms. The actual application for probate isn’t too hard to understand . If there is no IHT to pay there is no hurry and that helps a lot.

If you have time to handle the admin, good at keeping track of detail, can operate a basic spreadsheet, and feel comfortable filling in complex forms, I do not think you need a solicitor. Especially as it sounds like loads of headroom in the IHT threshold so it’s unlikely you can make a mistake grotesque enough to change the IhT situation.

I was very relieved when the tax clearance and the Probate were granted without further query.

I have also experienced a probate solicitor handling things for me (a different estate I was Executor of) and it was about 95% less work for me.

There used to be a which guide on the subject. Might be useful.

@FrenchandSaunders Tricky. Does the accountant hold all the financial information pertaining to the estate?

in this situation I believe DH should tell Accountant he would like all financial information released to himself, and is prepared to pay £500 for this service and answering basic questions about the finances of the deceased. Reasonable compromise.

Then as accountant is not acting in best interest of the beneficiaries (as DH would charge 0.00 for services) please would accountant reserve powers and not act in the probate matter leaving it all to your DH to do it all

send a formal letter to the effect of the Accountant refuses to reserve powers or waive his fees, then DH will apply to court to remove him as Executor and if he seeks to Act and charge the estate in the meantime, these cost will not be covered by the Estate. Unless of course the Accoutnant can produce a signed contract or engagement letter or a provision in the Will stating how much the Accountant can charge the Estate, which I suspect there is not.

If it gets tricky, involve a solicitor.

If the accountant refuses, not “of”

I have done probate myself several times, it’s time consuming and depending on your relationship to the deceased, emotionally draining, but not particularly difficult if you are an organised person. There’s a ‘long’ and a short version, it sounds like the short version would apply in this case.

I couldn’t find any one who offered a specific executor bank account so I just used one in my name that I didn’t use for anything else.

I did my dads and I'm not the smartest - I'd say as long as there's no obvious disputes or complications do it yourself, it's very straightforward

Sorry meant to add - I'm pretty sure if a solicitor does it you have to provide them with all the information required anyway (they just collate it and fill in the forms) so you do all the legwork and they get paid!

We are currently waiting for probate to be granted for my mums estate. We are using a solicitor as mum had a lot of different share, several banks accounts, bonds, ISAs and her house was rented out to help pay her care home fees. My sister had previously done the probate for her in laws and knowing the work involved, she could not face it again.

The solicitor has indeed asked us for most of the necessary information but has been helpful with some tax problems with the rental property - we were not up to date with the returns and as the time period straddled three tax years by a few weeks, there was a lot of work to do.

Once probate is issued, we applied in September and are still waiting, the solicitor will deal with selling the shares, contacting the different financial institutions and insurance companies re mums savings and work with the Property Agents to serve notice on the tenants.

His fees will be around £3000 plus a few extras for phone calls etc.

We are capable of doing this ourselves but don’t want to, my brother and sister both work full time and have children living at home so we all agreed that it would be too time consuming without using a solicitor. Fortunately we have a family friend who is a solicitor that we have used before for house moves and wills so, although he always charges the appropriate amount, we do trust him and can phone him out of hours if we need to.

I've had to organise probate twice for family. It's quite straightforward. I did the first via a solicitor (@£5k) and the second myself.

Yes, I did it for my grandad's estate. It took about 4 hours in total, spread over a few weeks.

I did the whole thing for a parent - all completed in less than three months and inheritances distributed and I wasnt rushing to return forms.
In laws however - solicitors involved minor mistakes made on forms, just as much work on my part, taken twice as long and very expensive. Didn't tell us for over six weeks that probate had actually been granted. However had to use professionals as DH siblings can be very unpleasant and we did not want direct contact with them.

From what you have described I would do it yourselves. I would make sure you get the grant of probate before you put the house on market.

My brother and I did DM's when she passed away. All on-line and very straight forward even though it was a few hundred thousand of value. Did the CGT on a sold rental too. All pretty easy, even during Covid, back then it just took a long time because so many had died.

My husband did his parents' estate. It is time consuming. He found many helpful people along the way, impressed that he'd taken it on. At one point some sort of legal officer, [it might have been a Commissioner for Oaths who was needed to witness/sign papers] opened his office out of hours for us.

Good luck! It's a nice thing to do as a last task for loved ones, I think.

I've done probate twice. It's really not difficult and £6k is outrageous.
I did BIL which was above IHT and my mother's which was below.
For the one below IHT they were happy to accept my estimate of the property value.
I had probate within 6 weeks. The only thing that took time was selling the house.
Even if you pay a solicitor they will expect you to provide all the information and documents. It will proceed at snail pace and the end result is that beneficiaries wait longer and get less money.

I've done three now, I do all the prep work and then pass to the solicitors for all the form filling, Court stuff etc. It can be quite onerous and emotionally draining.

Have done probate ourselves twice. For a straightforward estate like this, it really is a very simple process. I wouldn't have paid a few grand, let alone the quote that they've been given.