Estate expenses

[buntymcfun]

My FIL died and left his estate into equal amounts to his children. It’s all gone through probate and we’re at the last stage where the solicitor has asked for expenses to be submitted. One of the children is submitting a claim for costs incurred whilst FIL was alive, specifically food shopping they did for a few years. Can the costs of that be taken from the estate before the proceeds are paid out?

No idea but the solicitor will

Assuming they were buying the food for FIL, the question is whether the food was a gift, in which case they cannot claim the cost, or if they were loaning the money for the food, in which case they can.

I would be surprised if they can claim what’s to say your father didn’t already pay for it if he gave them cash in rerun they would be no money trail so hard to prove. Also as he’s deceased who is to rule the intention was a gift or not. It’s cheeky to try to claw that back now. Estate expenses are usually those incurred after death, funeral etc with clear invoices.

So one of the children did food shopping and presume your fil paid for the products but they want money for their time and petrol? If so, that is such a piss-take.

I doubt it. Estate expenses are related to costs incurred after death. If they were to include costs before death, it would open the door to a whole host of spurious claims. The solicitor should advise what's included on the Probate form

If it’s all gone through probate it sounds like the solicitor is ready to now distribute the proceeds to the beneficiaries, the solicitor asking for expenses is probably to make sure they haven’t overlooked anything before distributing the funds, as probate has already gone through there is no further probate form and will be the solicitors making sure no one can make further claim. Usually the genuine expenses funeral expenses, tax, etc would have been deducted form the gross estate and submitted on the probate application so I would not get too caught up in this late submission for costs whilst he’s alive. The solicitor will more than likely take this with a pinch of salt but of course the solicitor would be the right person to ask if you are still worried.

It is clearly not an estate expense, but it could be money legitimately owed by the estate. Assuming the food was purchased for FIL and they have not already been repaid, the only question is whether there was a reasonable expectation that they would be refunded.

Thank you every one. I agree with your summaries, we’re really confused why they are claiming now when they had access to his pension money and could equally have used that. There’s a lot of bad blood generally sadly and we think it might partly be to make a point at the end that they helped out more than others in the family. Which is fair enough too but seems very late to start mentioning it

They had access to pension money toward costs but kept years worth of food receipts? Sounds very strange but also understandable if they do feel they took on the lionshare of the work of caring for their father without thanks. If it’s not a lot, it’s probably not worth the expense of arguing it via the solicitors?