Probate - how do I get started

[Hisredipad]

ive no idea where to start. Didn’t want to accept DH was dying so have only just pulled my head out of the sand.

presume I need to start by getting the copy of his will lodged at the solicitors.

is there a step by step guide on what to do? Don’t want to pay a solicitor to do it as I need as much as possible for me and the kids.

My brain is mush, I feel so useless, got told today I can go and get the death certificate from a registry office.

I’m so sorry for your loss 💐

I’m in Scotland, so the process is slightly different from
England/elsewhere however I used an online help site called myprobatepartner - It provided guides and a personal review for around £500 which saved us literally thousands of pounds when doing my dad’s estate. Unless you’re in Scotland, this probably seems unhelpful but I’m sure they could recommend an English counterpart?

https://thenbs.org/probate-services is a good place to start.

Take it easy. I found it took me six months to build up the resilience to actually submit the paperwork. Often dealing with it would make me very upset, and I had to have several attempts. In the end took a day off work and cleared my diary so I could get it all finally finished

If you’re in England or Wales, the ‘tell us once’ might be helpful

www.gov.uk/after-a-death/organisations-you-need-to-contact-and-tell-us-once

I'm sorry you are going through this. I lost DH in October & did his probate fairly easily & it came through in 3 weeks. The forms are on line & easy, it takes you through step by step.
www.gov.uk/applying-for-probate/apply-for-probate
I actually found that it helped to have something practical to do.

If it's a simple estate there is absolutely no need to pay anyone anything. If you inherit anything there is no inheritance tax, although you do have to estimate the value of his estate but there's an on line tool for that linked to in the probate procedure.
Get a few copies of the death certificate & grant of probate as you will need to send them off to various places.

I have done probate for both my DH (a couple of decades ago) and both my parents (last year). Both times I got solicitors to help, but did most of the legwork myself (getting all the paperwork and valuations done myself) and used the solicitors for advice and to fill in the forms correctly and submit them. My parents had quite complicated estates, but it still only cost me around £3.5k on solicitors' fees for each of them, which was money well spent to make sure I didn't make any huge mistakes, as far as I am concerned. It is not worth paying a solicitor to write all the letters to banks and building societies for you.

The will is a starting point, but also you need to go through all your assets (house, car, any savings or investments) and check which were held in your DH's name and which were joint. If you owned your house jointly or had bank or savings accounts in joint names, those automatically pass to you without needing to go through probate.

If you were married, and he has left everything to you, you won't pay inheritance tax. Did he have any life insurance? Will you be entitled to a widow's pension from any work or private pensions? Have you looked into widowed parent's allowance, if you have children under 18?

When you go to get the death certificates, get multiple copies - you don't want to have to wait for your one copy to come back from one institution before sending it to another.

The information pack you get with the death certificates will probably include something about the Tell Us Once service, which is really easy to use and saves you a chunk of the sadmin. https://www.gov.uk/after-a-death/organisations-you-need-to-contact-and-tell-us-once

Once the death is registered you need the Will and to fill in the inheritance tax forms.

www.gov.uk/government/publications/inheritance-tax-inheritance-tax-account-iht400

Even if no tax to pay.
You follow those through, there's loads of guidance and if the estate is straightforward they are easy to do. Once all filled out and submitted(and pay tax if any due) hmrc come back with a code that lets you apply for probate online.

To do that you need the will, the physical original gets sent off (make copies for yourself to keep) and then they email to say all good and then the grant comes in the post.

There are lots of guides, the registry office may give you one, or the funeral directors. The bank and electricity company sent me some also.

I'm in the process of doing this for my mum who died last year. From everything I've read, you don't need to fill in the IHT400 now (since 2022 I think) if the deceased and spouse have both always been uk resident, the estate is less than £3m, (with no trust value over £250k) and everything above the IHT threshold is going to the spouse.

The main probate form asks for some basic values though, even if the full IHT400 isn't necessary. But it seems to be quite a straightforward form to complete. I plan to fill mine in tomorrow actually as I have the day off, and I just discovered you're supposed to have done it within one year (and I'm now already over that by a few days ). Hopefully they will give some leeway given no tax is due. Kind of comforting to know someone else will be doing theirs too.

Use the tell us once service to notify all government services

notify banks and building society's to safeguard accounts and get valuations for probate (use the death notification service if unsure who your husband banked with)

in terms of applying for probate you can do it through the government website which is relatively straight forward. You can appoint a solicitor or some banks to apply for probate for you but you are going to end up paying a lot More for them to do it for you.

Do you actually NEED probate?

If you have jointly owned property and joint bank accounts / or he had accounts with less than about £20k in them then it may not be needed.
If he had a Sipp/ private pension or NSI savings/premium bonds then they always require probate.

My MiL and FiL had wills, when she died he didn’t need to do probate, when he died we needed probate only to sell his house, the banks released his money to my DH without it, all they needed was his will uploading to their bereavement dept.

Hopefully any life insurance was written in trust?

Life insurance in trust and pensions are outside someone’s Estate so there is NO IHT to pay if over the limit.
There is never IHT to pay on property going to a Spouse either.

Thanks. Still head in the sand but aiming to get started.

an interesting thing for anyone reading this for their own information.

I contact the DWP to tell them of DH passing, they paid me the days they owed him in pension. I asked about widows pension and was told when I became of retirement age I could have some of DH’s pension. no more said. Asked to speak with attendance allowance dept as knew that was overpaid.

anyhow somehow ended up speaking to same department as DH pension and not attended allowance and she said had I been told I was I was entitled to a lump £2000 plus £100 a month for 18 months. Errr no!

so luckily I was transferred wrong and I was told about this Bereavement Support Payment which I didn’t know about.