A bit of a rant about the confirmation process

[GenieGenealogy]

Or Probate, as it's called south of the border. Mum died leaving a considerable financial amount but no property or other large assets like antiques or vehicles. So it's just bank accounts, premium bonds, savings, that sort of thing. Her will was as simple as simple can be. Everything to Dad. But because her estate was over £30k, I have to apply for confirmation through the courts.

The drawing up the spreadsheet of the accounts and balances was the easy bit. The form is really confusing and written in legal-ese, I consider myself fairly switched on and have a masters degree but no idea how to word some of the boxes. Courts will not give any advice on larger estates at all, not even on the legal wording in the boxes. And the solicitor (who is very nice and very helpful) wants £195 +VAT per hour for advice and checking form.

It's such a rip off. HMRC and other government agencies have done what they can to simplify forms and put them into plain English, not so the Scottish Court Service and HMRC. Total faff. When dad finally goes and there are houses involved, it will have to be left to the lawyers who will charge £££££.

Sorry for your loss, it's hard having to deal with this whilst still grieving. However, if your mum has left a substantial estate I would just get the solicitor to deal with it. The cost isn't much in the grand scheme of things and giving yourself the extra stress just really isn't worth it.

The charge can come out of the transferred money and is probably a lot less than the investment makes or loses in an average day.

Take care.

Dh ended up (long story) being executor of his mum's estate, along with his brother (who lived in England, so dh had to do the majority of the work).

There was a house as well but the rest of the estate was similar to what you describe.

The original executor had drawn up the will but had retired. He refused to give up the executory and was obstructive and malicious (there were other issues which I won't go into) and eventually (2 years later ) couldn't go to the Law Society as he was no longer registered the siblings managed to get him removed so they could do it themselves.

Dh ended up filling out the T1(?) and T2(?) forms (or is it C?) but to be fair, the solicitor who was helping him (having taken over the original firm) and in whose name the forms would be submitted, said that if there were any errors, the commissary court would highlight the error and send it back to be tippexed with the appropriate adjustment.

DH did this recently for MIL estate.
The court called him to clarify a couple of points. I think he went down there to alter and initial the changes. The court was much more helpful than the solicitor.
But if there are several areas about which you are unclear, it’s probably worth paying the solicitor, but confirm the number of hours ahead of time, and ask him to seek permission before he exceeds the amount agreed.

I completed the form as best I could and sent it off to the solicitor for checking. The "legalese" which you need to write in the various boxes was incredible, would never had managed to get the wording right. Things like "In said Will the deceased is designed as" or "Said Will is produced, docquetted and signed as relative hereto." Also I'd wager that not many of us know what Sheriffdom we live in!!

You also have to split the list of the estate between heritable and moveable estate (property and the rest of it), and what's held in Scotland and what's held in England and Wales.

It's just not an easy process. I think the solicitor did say that if the estate is valued at under £30k the courts will give you loads of help and guidance. Over that, you're on your own. I mean, the fees are a small percentage of the estate but you are pretty much forced into getting a lawyer to at least help with it all. Legal profession haven'r got much of an incentive to simplify it all though have they.

Dh didn't find it too bad (he's not a lawyer ). But at least we're in Glasgow so we know which Sherriffdom!

Moveable and non-moveable estate is easy (and was an issue in his mum's estate as legal rights were involved with one sibling who had been written out of the will - but they only come into play on the moveable estate).

Essentially everything that's not the house/land is moveable estate.

The house was worth c£100k and the rest of the estate about £80k.

Dh actually found an error in one the forms that the initial executor produced (who was a lawyer) - iirc, something to do with the pensions. He completed them himself and I passed them on to the lawyer to submit but I don't think that they had to change anything.

We're just about to go through the process again with my dad's estate - but although there were joint executors (the "trustee" arm of the law firm who drew up the will and a friend of my dad's), she died a few months ago and my dad hadn't got round yet to amending it (it was all very sudden )

Sorry to hear you're going through the same thing, @prettybird. There is so much work to do when a parent passes away in telling people and organising things and cancelling things and all the "sadmin" seems to turn into a full time job, on top of all the rest of it. Now the plan is to get the remaining parent to spend the money rather than just keep it all squirrelled away.

Sorry to hear about your dad @prettybird.

Good luck getting them to spend money OP. I'm from a large family and we were blue in the face telling DM to just spend and enjoy whatever she had as we were all doing fine. When she died she had a fair amount stashed away that we think was maybe insurance money from when my brother died.

Shared between us all is wasn't a lot but it would have improved her day to day life a lot. She'd had a hard life of poverty and it would have given us joy to see her be a bit frivolous. Don't get me wrong, she wasn't living in poverty when she died but had to be talked into or treated to things like new curtains etc when actually she could easily afford them.

My parents have always been comfortable. Both teachers all their lives, mum was a classroom teacher in Primary her whole career, dad was head of department but they weren't heads, or deputy heads or anything like that. So a good income, but not rolling in it. Decent public sector pensions though, and a very frugal lifestyle, especially over the last 10-5 years. The odd holiday to the Med, staying in 2* self catering, pre-covid at least. One car which is about 12 years old. No expensive hobbies, no art collections or speedboats. Clothes bought from M&S or the Damart catalogue on a "need" basis, they both had lots of things in their wardrobes which are at least 20 years old. Last time I was there my brother was on the phone to Scottish Power pretending to be dad and asking them to reduce his electricity direct debit as he's paying something like £80 a month, using on average 65p a day and is thousands in credit.

Shopping at Lidl and Aldi. Nothing wrong with that, but Dad was ooohing and aaahing over the "lovely" M&S biscuits I'd bought as a treat. The comment that he could do his entire weekly shop at M&S and STILL not run out of money fell on deaf ears.

He is fairly biddable though and will do as he's told so if sibling and I get together and say that he needs new windows and doors and that we're not taking no for an answer, he'll go along with it.

That's good to hear. 😊
My parents worked hard their whole lives but never earned much.

It's when I'm going food shopping and (current cost of living crisis excepted) I can generally add to my basket what I want that it hits home how much my DM would have loved to be able to just do that.

Sorry for your loss OP. I've been through this twice with both parents but fortunately in England where the HMRC helpline are just wonderful.

I would instruct the lawyer, they will probably get through it in a relatively short time and their fees are reasonable. My mum did her dad’s on her own after she was charged a fortune (much more than £195 an hour) for my gran’s and found it ok there were houses though but my grandad had left his to another family member

When my mum died leaving her house and around a fair amount in cash in bank we found the confirmation process really simple. We didn't use a solicitor at all. We filled in the form, my brother made an appointment directly with the court, went down with the appropriate documents and a clerk looked over the form and suggested some changes. They said if he changed and came back within a couple of hours they would still do it that day and it was all done just like that.

What boxes are you stuck with? I might have a scanned copy somewhere still.

These are the only legal talk bits really on the form.

But this was when my mum died. When dad died everything just passed to mum and we didn't need to do any confirmation as they were married.

Sorry for you loss it is such a difficult time.

I think the rules have changed over time or something, everything does to the spouse but I think we were told we needed confirmation as it's quite a lot of money.

When my remaining parent dies I will be definitely letting the solicitors deal with it as there will be property involved and everything remaining split 50/50 me and my sibling.

The fact that people are married is not the defining factor as to whether Confirmation is required