Probate-doing it yourself?

[Cannedheat1999]

Has anyone had any experience of applying for probate without a solicitor. The estate is in the region of £900,000. One, sole beneficiary (house and one investment account) plus pension etc. No legal training, but fairly confident in admin matters etc. How bad a job will this be ?!

Dh did both his parents without a solicitor.
I think you could do it. You can always engage a solicitor for specific bits if needed.

I have done my Dad's and then later my Mum's. It is a pain but not difficult. I rang Probate Office with a query and they were really helpful.

Given the value of the estate is IHT likely to be payable?

I did my Dad’s, it was draining but not difficult.

I did both my parents probate myself and as others have said it is very straight-forward with lots of guidance and support available. However, the inheritance I was working with was no where near IHT limits, it might be worth the solicitors fees if they can help reduce the IHT payment.

Yes, I did my mum and dads. You just need to be organised with getting all the figures together and then work methodically through the forms esp if you are claiming property disregard. The IHT bit is actually very easy

The thing with using a solicitor is that a lot if the information has to be gathered by you anyway, so it wouldn’t necessarily save lots of hassle.
Plus they tend to charge fees based on the value if the estate, which in this case would be extortionate.

Yes I did for my Mum - 2 beneficiaries. Surprisingly straightforward if a little slow

Absolutely agree with @HornyHornersPinkyWinky that whoever does it, the process starts with the admin of gathering information across all the assets, how much effort this is depends entirely on what info have been ‘left being’. My DF had left a table of names, addresses and account references, which made everything pretty simple.

for the cousin who left no information behind, just finding the accounts took for ever.

once you have the info, I’d encourage you to fill out the forms and then see how far you get. If you get stuck anywhere, ring the help live (best response at their early morning as soon as they open). Doing it yourself does not stop you getting opinion from a specialist, the info still has to be gathered.

At that level, IHT will be due, depending on what has already been used. Transfers between married couples are free if tax, so two parents, leaving the family home to their descendants, if on the death of the first the estate has been left to the other, there is nearly £1m available.

I did the paperwork/legwork for my Partner's Mother's but it was just a few tens of thousands in bank accounts split two ways.

My own Mother's was well into IHT territory and having a solicitor involved even though her fees were north of £10k was worth every penny. Knowledge of what was and was not permissible and the extent to which IHT could be mitigated by various actions saved us far more than the cost, never mind the stress.

you can start contacting organisations for valuations to gather any info before applying for probate there is a active deaths and probate forum on money saving expert that has lots of help and online the probate fee for DIY is a lot cheaper. If you need a solicitor to do the probate for if IHT might be payable they can quote for that work, the difference is lots of solicitors will charge the estate a % for literally doing everything.

Pensions currently fall outside of the estate so you won’t need probate to start dealing with those.

I found this section of Citizens Advice website hugely helpful when dealing with my mother’s estate.

https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/family/death-and-wills/dealing-with-the-financial-affairs-of-someone-who-has-died/

If the deceased has inherited the IHT allowance from their spouse, and the house is being left to a child/grandchild, you would be under the threshold for IHT.

As you are in the region of paying IHT, you'd be well advised to use a solicitor.

Probate isn't particularly hard. You just need to be VERY good at administration, form filling, comprehension to understand the rules and what's required, ability to research, etc. A bit like anything really. Lots of people do their own tax returns, lots pay accountants to do it. It's horses for courses. I've done it for both my parents and my father in law. For specific reasons, the solicitor is doing it for my mother in law - I could easily have done it, but we chose not to!

I've also done "the numbers" and tax for clients of a local solicitor friend who didn't want to do the form filling and number crunching herself so "contracted out" that side of things to me as the drudgery of sorting through paperwork and chasing up banks, building societies, insurance firms, pension firms, DWP and HMRC is more my kind of thing, and she does the legal bits.

I did my mum’s, it was very straightforward. I made a spreadsheet, kept receipts and records etc. If your Estate you’re administering is that of the 2nd parent to die, even 900K probably won’t incur inheritance tax, but if not, there are ways to keep it down, that you can find on gov.Uk

Shop around with solicitors - there are some that charge an hourly rate plus a percentage of the estate (we had some quotes of £300 per hour plus 0.5% of property value and 1% of the rest of the estate) and others that only charge an hourly rate. If the estate is straightforward (no overseas property, stocks and shares portfolios, business interests etc) then you should be able to find a good solicitor that will charge the hourly rate only.

Some firms will give you a free 20 minute appointment to discuss the work and will be able provide a ballpark figure.

My DM’s estate is a bit less than yours, and we had estimates of between £3k and £12k, depending on whether they took the estate %.

Even a £900k estate may well not be liable for IHT if (very common scenario) this is the second death of a married couple, and the first one left everything to the second, and they owned a house, and the estate is being left to their offspring - in which case you would have two lots of maximum IHT allowance plus the extra for a main home, which adds up to £1m.

OP, if it is all straightforward like that then yes, you could almost certainly do it yourself. You will have to do most of the legwork anyway.

I got a solicitor to help me deal with my parents' estates as there were complications of trusts and so on, but I cut costs by doing all the information gathering etc myself and just used the solicitor for advice and to put the forms together correctly.

Just look out for random forms which aren’t mentioned but are referenced at the end of a form you’re completing. It’s a pain but by being methodical and keeping notes you should probably be able to do it. However, it can be very stressful so don’t worry if you need to engage someone to help you. The Co-op have a flat fee for it so probably some other companies do too.

I did my Dads, it was under IHT levels but included shares and investments. I’d say that im not that good at paperwork usually but I found it all ok. I just did it slowly and carefully.
My Dad left all his passwords for me before he died. It was immensely helpful.

DH and I did it ourselves for a very complex estate. There are two critical things. The first, as others have said, is information gathering. You need details of all investments, accounts, pensions, life assurance, property, gifts etc. Go through all the paperwork you can find very thoroughly. We also requested 7 years of bank statements and went through every page looking for anything relevant.

The second critical thing is to read all the IHT forms, supplements and associated guidance very, very carefully. Some things are not what you would expect. For example, MiLs life assurance premiums were classed as gifts to DH so had to be included on the 'gifts' form. I didn't expect that. But there is a lot of guidance online (including HMRCs internal IHT handbook) and we found this was enough to guide us through all the form filling. HMRCs IHT helpline was also very useful.

So although it can be complicated, it's definitely possible to DIY if you are methodical and organised. From what you have described, it should be perfectly possible to do it yourself.

I have done it and it is not difficult. The hardest part is collecting the information and you still have to do that even if you use a solicitor.

With one beneficiary, one house and one account it won't take more than a couple of hours.

My brother and I did our Dad’s probate and it was not complicated even though IHT was payable.
As PP have said, you have to gather all the information for a solicitor which is the time consuming bit, and they just fill in forms and charge you a ton of money.

I did it. If property is part of the estate, and if the inheritance is from a parent, who inherited everything from their spouse, IHT isn't payable for estates under a £1 million.

I sent my parent's death certificate to relevant banks asking for a final account of any money they held, I valued the estate by asking two local estate agents to write me a valuation and used these figures to value the estate - you need that figure for the probate application.

I applied for probate via the online form at gov.uk and sent it in. I had to pay a fee online to get plenty of certified copies of the probate grant. Probate was granted about 10 days later and I sent the probate forms to any banks who hadn't yet closed my parent's accounts and they paid the money to me (some had already done that on receipt of the death certificate).

Important points: I was the sole executor and sole beneficiary of my parent's will. They had inherited from a mirror will from my other parent, and no IHT was due. If the will had been more complicated, I might not have done it myself, but it was very simple and quick for me to do in my circumstances.

I signed up to the Which? free legal service for the duration, I think it was £9 a month, you get unlimited phone advice from their expert advisors, and I only needed two phone calls to sort it out. Take a look at gov.uk, there's lots of guidance on the forms.