Settling Estate : How Long?

[LovatGreen]

NC for this : How long does it take to settle an estate in Scotland?

It depends on how complicated it is and also on your solicitor.
When my gran died it took several years to settle a very simple estate due to useless solicitors.
DF died in May 2022 and DSM and I were joint executors (DSSis was named in the will as an executor but stood down). DF and DSM had complicated wills and DSM overrode that so that DB and I benefited from DF's estate and that took time to sort out and register. DSM never took my dad's surname but the will used it and that caused complications with an insurance policy with Aviva who refused to pay out and lost documents, so that delayed settlement but I finally had all the funds 7 or 8 months after his death.

Nearly 3 years on & still not done - but my parents put their assets including their home in a Trust & it's been an administrative nightmare.

We are 14 months at the moment. Just got an email from the solicitor saying they have taken some money from the estate ( no itemised bill )
.
They have access to the funds but we haven’t.

The house is still to be put up for sale. Confirmation took one year. Not sure whether to use the same solicitor.

we had access to all the funds as we were named as executors, and distributed money as it came in (all siblings both the executors and the inheritors). we had everything done and dusted in 8 months - inc sale of house.

Estate around £200k it took < 6 months, including house sale, but waited until 6 months to make sure everything was completed. Straight forward will split evenly between dc.

We only used solicitor for house sale, we did the confirmation ourselves through sheriff court.

It took me 9 months and there wasn't a property to be sold (because the other parent is still living in it).

Informing people is the easy bit, the hard bit is getting your head round the different rules of each institution/bank, some will want the original confirmation documents, others just happy with me emailing a copy of the will and the death certificate. The absolute WORST for paperwork and wanting copies of everything has been the premium bonds.

It took about 18 months for my dad's due to his will being missing.

1 year from the date of death of my DH to get the Confirmation through, and that’s a straightforward case, worth just under £300,000. Still waiting for the money though - solicitor says she has to sort out transfer of DH’s investments (transfer of ownership from DH to me) as I don’t want to cash in on these investments at the moment. I am the sole executor.

it has been quite an onerous process, to be honest. I just want to pay off the mortgage in full (joint ownership, so now in my name), then I can think about how to parcel up the money around - don’t want to leave it all in one bank in case it goes bust and I can only get back £82,000 (I think).

Maybe we have the same solicitor @balkanscot

Banks usually guarantee up to £85K

Can I PM you @balkanscot ?

The absolute WORST for paperwork and wanting copies of everything has been the premium bonds.

The solicitor advised DSM and me to open a bank account to ingather my DF's money and Premium Bonds randomly paid £1 into it for the one premium bond my dad owned (I guess they had been informed because DSM asked for all government agencies to be informed of the death when she registered the death).

The estate is still not settled.
Apparently waiting for some firm to reconcile for the last 2 months.
Offered interim payment.

The house was sold in the summer. My husband and sister already had half of it on FIL estate.
MIL had investments managed by the lawyers ….

More than a year. And the lawyer (or rather paralegal) is absolutely useless and slow as a snail. The fees on a small, non-complicated estate (no real assets, no IHT) are utterly extortionate. I wish I had read up on how to do it myself and given it a go because (for a few bank accounts) it can’t be that hard quite frankly.

A year for my MIL estate which wasn't complicated but she had left everything to her husband and we had to contact 2 brothers who took ages to reply and decided they wanted to claim their legal rights so this had to be sorted.