Is this will legal? Executors but no beneficiaries.

[oopslateagain]

My great-uncle just died, and my mum is the next-of-kin legally.

He left a will that he made from one of the do-it-yourself kits, but when I read it over, I don't think it's legal.

He has named my mum and dad as executors and trustees.

But where it states that everything will be divided into shares and distributed, he has crossed it all through as non-applicable. So there are basically no beneficiaries.

My question is: is the will legal? It is all properly signed and witnessed. If it is not legal then are my mum and dad still executors? They have done all the arrangements so far, informed the banks and arranged the funeral.

The problem if the will is not legal, is that he never married and had no children. He did have eight brothers and sisters, most of whom have died along with their spouses. There is one living sister-in-law. Some did not have children.

We are assuming that his estate would be divided equally among the eight brothers and sisters. If the sibling has died, the 1/8th share would go to the spouse if living, and to the children if not.

If a sibling has died with no spouse or children, does his/her share go back and get divided between the remaining siblings?

This is all very confusing, and ridiculous really. He left very little money and no property, and after the funeral bills there will be hardly anything to distribute.

But the family can be very petty about things like this, probate has already been mentioned, they are convinced he had some huge payout when he retired (he didn't). My mum is about ready to throw all the paperwork at them and tell them to stuff her share, sort it all out for themselves. But she has too much respect for my uncle, she wants everything to be settled properly.

Help please!

Goodness.

Right, the will is not valid, there's no beneficiaries.

I'll add more in a minute, I hate cutting and pasting but it'll make things easier for you to understand if this is OK.

My great-uncle just died, and my mum is the next-of-kin legally. This is fine

He has named my mum and dad as executors and trustees. This is fine.

But where it states that everything will be divided into shares and distributed, he has crossed it all through as non-applicable. So there are basically no beneficiaries. This is not* fine

My question is: is the will legal? No
It is all properly signed and witnessed. If it is not legal then are my mum and dad still executors? No as there is legally no will.
They have done all the arrangements so far, informed the banks and arranged the funeral this is fine as it's next of kin job.

The problem if the will is not legal, is that he never married and had no children. He did have eight brothers and sisters, most of whom have died along with their spouses. There is one living sister-in-law. Some did not have children. Here the whole estate is now intestate. It depends on what his estate is worth now as to what your mum should do. If it's worth alot then she needs to seek professional advice, the cost of this will come out of the estate. If you google 'intestate rules' this should help. Probate can't be granted until all of this is sorted so ignore who gets what etc. If the estate is really small/no property then the next of kin can gain probate and distrubute the remainder of the estate how they see fit, normally as you have described.

In most cases where the estate is very small then probate does not need to be sought as it's a waste of time. If I were here I would pop to the CAB (to cover herself to be honest) and seek some advice, then do what you were planning anyway. Hope this helps.

Thank you! This does make it all a lot clearer.

He had no life insurance, and money only in one bank. His total savings are around £15,000. After the funeral there will be around £12,000 or so. I am pretty sure that we don't need probate BUT we really don't want to deal with squabbling relatives. It's just not NICE and we are likely to say some rather nasty things about moneygrabbing.

I will google intestate rules tomorrow (going to bed now!) - thank you for that, I had no idea what it was called when you died without a will, and everything I tried to google before seemed to be about Americans! Hopefully better luck tomorrow. I want to try to get this sorted before the funeral on Tuesday because this is when the relatives will appear - along with the arguments.

How stressful for you. I'm really sorry about your uncle.

www.hmrc.gov.uk/manuals/ihtmanual/IHTM12101.htm This should give you all the information that you need. Don't forget about his personal possessions (furniture etc), there's a list of who should get paid out of the estate, the funeral costs are at the very top, tax man is next followed by any debts that he may have had, with any beneficiaries right at the bottom. If there is not enough left to pay the bills then the next of kin has to write to them and state that there is not enough left in the estate to pay them. Make sure your mum contacts all of the utility companies/benefits agency if she has not done already, there is often money that is refunded from these as people pay extra (via direct debits normally).

12 k is a lot for a funeral though.

Ah no, I meant that he had £15k and the funeral would be around £3k leaving £12k in the bank. £12k would be a pretty amazing funeral!

Thank you so much for your help. That IR website is actually very good!

I do have one more question which I can't find an answer to, the intestacy rules state that the beneficiaries in this case would be "brothers and sisters of the whole blood - equally and their issue per stirpes". Where does my uncle's sister-in-law stand? She is a widow but they had no children. We would be inclined to give her her husbands share but is that legally right?

No, she's related through marriage, not through blood. It's only the wife/husband that can inherit or you would end up sharing the remainder of the estate between alot of people.

12K is quite a large sum to be honest, it may not be when it's divided but I'm farly certain for this amount that probabate should be sought. If the estate were a few hundred pounds then this wouldn't be an issue.

Remainin spouse is always first, if none then children, if no children then it's brothers and sisters of the deceased, if none then it's their children, if none then it's cousins, if none then it's children of cousins. I can't remember if aunts and uncles of the deceased comes into this somewhere aswell, the IR web site should say, I think they come before cousins. If no relatives at all then the estate goes to the crown.

Thanks Belle. I've read all the relevant bits now, and it does look like we will have to seek probate. I have my fingers crossed that when we look at 'closest living relative' it's NOT my mum and we can hand it over for someone else to deal with tbh.

I do appreciate your time and advice.

You are welcome. It must be such a stressful time for you, if you need an ear to bend then just shout out.

Your mum can normiate someone else to be the executor if she doesn't wish to do this, you are entitled to appoint a solicitor to do all this for you so she does not need to do anything and the funds to pay for this will come out of the estate, I don't know about how much it will cost though so it might be a good idea to have a phone around tomorrow.

A quick update - mum and dad just went into the bank, they were very nice about it all, mum and dad showed them the will and the bank said it was no problem, they would release the money to my mum as executor.

I can't believe it is going to be this easy, I thought we were going to have a right old time of it.

We're still going to have the daft arguments about who gets what, but mum will just split it up between the siblings and let them sort it out from there. At least I can print the pages out from the hmrc website and hand them out if there are any squabbles.

We're sorely tempted to tell 'em all that Uncle wanted to leave everything to Battersea Dogs Home. Would love to see their faces.

That would be interesting, you could do what Archie Mitchell did in his will, give each of them something really stupid, like a pair of his old slippers!