Inheritance Question

[Pilgrimgirl]

Apologies if I'm posting in the wrong place but how does distribution of inheritance work? My dh, along with his sister, are the sole beneficiaries of their mothers will. Sadly, their mother has just a short time to live and not only are we devastated about this but dh and I are very worried about how his future inheritance will affect us. We are not well off, we just about scrape by running our tiny house and his mother will be leaving her house between him and his sister, but has only a small amount of cash in her bank account. Dh and his sister would put the house up for sale as soon as possible, but it could take a long time to sell and we worry about how we would pay for our share of running the house in the meantime, bills, council tax etc. Does anyone know how this works? Does an estate get distributed as soon as probate is granted? Would he then become part owner and responsible for the house? We are spending time worrying about this when we just want to concentrate on his mother.

Oh and we did all the IHT and probate ourselves but family includes a lawyer and a solicitor and one or two usefully anal people (in nicest way) who love spreadsheets and checking forms.

Sorry to hear you are going through this, it's such a stressful time.

Any costs for administering the estate and maintaining the house before the house is sold/estate fully settled are payable by the estate - not the beneficiaries/executors.

Funeral costs can also be paid for by the estate if there funds available. Some banks will release funds early to assist with funeral costs if needed.

Contact the bereavement team for all utilities and pesonal accounts. Water bills were put on hold until the final estate was settled - money received from the sale of the house, as were gas and electric. Council tax was 0 for one year but it is dependant on the local authority and some only offer free for 6 months and then a sliding scale of charge going forward. If there is no spare cash in the "estate funds" then as long as you keep them updated and informed, they may be ok with settling the balance once house is sold. I found this to be true of many accounts - as there was a slight overpayment on a pension that had to be repaid and the organisation was happy to wait for the estate to be finalised, I just kept them informed of progress/dates.

The solicitors I used were excellent, I did alot myself and got them to advise/double check on certain forms, but on the estate I handled Inheritance tax was due and I found it easier to get the solicitors to help me. I used the same solicitor for the sale of the house. Think I paid around £1500 plus vat for probate - which was deducted from the estate funds once all monies were received.

That is all very helpful although when we say the estate pays something if 2 people inherit everything then they in every sense are paying ultimately as it comes out of the money they inherit so the more costs can be kept down the better. However as a solicitor I am certainly not trying to encourage people not to use solicitors - they can be very helpful. Start by looking at value of the estate. - average UK house price is £282k and only 10% of estates I think are within inheritance tax so it is probably so that this one will be similar - no IHT and probably not much cash in bank accounts, just the value of the house after sale costs.