I’m executor of my Mother’s estate.

It’s not a particularly complicated will although there is a trust to be unwound on her house. However, the sums involved are quite large.

Safer to use a solicitor to do the donkey work and sort out the forms or do it myself?

The forms are free to download – have a look and see. If the estate assets / terms of the will are fairly straight forward then it’s mostly a case of ticking ‘no’ and going on to the next section

it’s quite a lot like filling out self assessment

whether you do it yourself or get it done for you you’re going to have to find and present the same information so looking at the paperwork at least prompts you to find the information you’ll need

Personally I would use a solicitor indeed I have. It can be quite spend = mine charges up to 3% of the estate. Part of my reason tho was because my head was minced and part of it was I am rubbish at administration

Edit – all I did was hand the solicitor a couple of carrierbags full of paperwork. Just emptied the filing cabinet basically

We used a solicitor. If we had done it ourselves we would have missed some bits and actually ended up paying less tax. Paid for itself.

There’s a useful guide on the Martin Lewis / Money Saving Expert website.

We’ve done it twice ourselves for FIL and MIL. Be aware there is a fair old backlog – Probate office are currently processing May applications. We’ve got a house to sell and we’ve been waiting since June.

There will be instances of overwhelming grief when it would it would be a really bad idea to diy. I did my mum’s after her long illness, I’d kinda gone through the pain before she eventually died. The “Tell us Once” protocol sorted utilities etc and all the agencies involved were really helpful. Joint executor but I had grant of probate with a fairly simple (but acrimonious ) will. It’s a step by step process and quite simple to follow. There was a small estate to administer and a trust to set up for one of the beneficiaries, so very straightforward. It took about 6 months to sort out, but there was a property to sell. If your head’s straight, go for it.

Thanks – I think I am somewhere between these two positions. 3% of the estate would be an awful lot of money for the work so I think I’d go for a pay for the time solicitor if I go down that road. The solicitor holding the will gave a ballpark of £5k when I talked to him – but depends how big the ballpark is

I’ll have a look at the forms and have a think. I am pretty savvy, accountant by profession, but equally I wouldn’t do anything at work vaguely complicated legally without a lawyer – then again, I’m not paying for legal advice at work!

The solicitor warned me about the backlog, but because of the house being in trust to me he assured me we could market straight away before probate is granted even though the proceeds would form, part of the estate. Not 100% sure I understand the mechanics of this which maybe suggests I should lawyer up

You won’t get probate until the tax return is done. Dependent on the size of the estate this will be the difficult bit. My mum’s estate was borderline so I got an accountant to do that (best £80 I ever spent) and did the probate forms myself. As Fossy says there is a backlog so don’t do simple things like take the staples out of the will when you photocopy it. They question that and of thing and the time scales start again from each query they ask of you.

My Dad just had to do both his step father’s then his Mum’s. He did the first himself, then utterly regretted getting a solicitor to do his mum’s as they were a shower of excrement. If you have time maybe best on your own?

I did it for my Fad’s estate – it wasn’t that difficult but equally the ta threshold was not exceeded.
I would do it again, the probate office were really helpful

I am pretty savvy, accountant by profession…snip

IME that’s a huge part of it. The legal bit comes in when you deal with the will, I bottled it when I came to the trusts and other stuff aimed at reducing IHT 🙂
Maybe you could negotiate a reduced, you do the legal bit and I’ll do the financials, cost agreement with a solicitor

The paper (PDF form) process (IHT 400) for estates that are likely to end up paying Inheritance Tax is a dinosaur of a user experience. It is doable without a solicitor and the HMRC staff are friendly and helpful, but unwinding a trust on a propety I’d say is very much in the let an experienced solicitor deal with it.
You should pay a fixed price rather than % of the estate though.

My brother did it recently for my father’s estate – he’s pretty clued up but still involved a lot of form filling, digging through a lot of paperwork and a fair few headaches along the way (took 2-3 months to get it all sorted and then grant of probate another few months after that).

For £5k I’d pay someone else to sort it unless you have a lot of time available, much more than that though and it starts to get worthwhile doing it yourself (assuming the finances are easy enough to track down).

I d pay a professional if it’s a sizable sum and beneficiarys are likely to think somethings not fair. Do shop around tho, I know of 2 similar size estates, 1 paid 2k, the other 8k, the 8k one was an affluent area with a trusted solicitor.

Sad really, you end up doing all the running around for paperwork anyway. I look after a relatives affairs and it really is a lot of chasing around. Glad I m a cyclist and live locally.

3% of an estate over the IHT threshold is a lot of money. Our solicitor has had a huge lengthy struggle with an intestate family member and HMRC dragging their feet and after 4 years of work it was still probably less than that (thinks…ok must have got close…still, he described it as a uniquely difficult case, and it’s his main line of work).

Ours was/is relatively straight forward, house and some cash left to three daughters, but house has a charge against it for three years Nursing Home fees, which we need to pay the council back. After those fees, what’s left isn’t a huge amount split equally.

Only issue is one of the sisters didn’t respond to the accountants who had held the will, saying that it needed to be collected or would be destroyed. She didn’t respond, so we’ve only got a copy of the will.

Only issue is one of the sisters didn’t respond to the accountants who had held the will, saying that it needed to be collected or would be destroyed. She didn’t respond, so we’ve only got a copy of the will.

Really? I doubt very, very much they would destroy a Will.
I worked with a very large law firm on a Will digitisation project where we scanned over 100k Wills – even after this they went back into storage, including the ones that were 150 years old and clearly were no longer needed!
(although a relative can always kick up a fuss way down the line)

I’d go back to them and ask for the original and if they can’t provide it ask why not.
Anyway, you’ll be fine with a copy, but lets hope it’s a copy of the latest Will!

With regards to the OP, my BIL, who was a large company CFO, says that the forms are not too difficult and that it’s quite possible to save yourselves some serious money by avoiding the solicitors/accountants.

Did my dad’s 4yrs ago, was nice & simple split equally between us kids, just under threshold & house sold 5yrs previously, still had to be on the ball to make sure the forms were completed correctly.
Currently looking down the barrel of being executor to a mate who is on his last legs, estranged from his family and whos father died 4yrs ago but still hasn’t had probate granted. Gonna leave that firmly in the solicitors court.

The will was destroyed. We’ve been back and asked. God knows why they did it, but SIL has her accounts there. Been a bit screwed by that, but the copy will is ‘split between three’ and that’s what we’d have to do if all the wills were ‘lost’ – you basically have to reconstruct a ‘fair’ will. Fortunately no money ear marked for great grand kids and grand kids – that can come out of any 3 way split. FIL’s will was unfair. MIL got house and cash, one sister got a nearly new Prius car, the other ipads, cameras and laptops, my wife, nothing !

Again, you could but having done a fair bit of the initial work on my dad’s stuff we just said **** it and threw it at the solicitors. Best money spent.

Again, you could but having done a fair bit of the initial work on my dad’s stuff we just said **** it and threw it at the solicitors. Best money spent.

Thats why I’d just look at the forms first – if you’ve done self assessment its very like doing self assessment and it’ll feel like reasonably familiar territory – not least the aspect of being asked a question, panicking a bit because you don’t understanding it then after a bit of resereach ticking ‘No’ and moving on to the next section. When you are looking forward at it, it seems like an awful lot of paperwork, when you look back its not much because theres a lot thats not relevant to you. But you have to feel like you’re ticking ‘no’ with confidence. It helped that my dad’s will was pretty straight forward and that he was a good, clear record keeper so all the materials I had to reference came easily to hand. In fact I did most of it sitting in his spare room and didnt really have to get out of the chair – everything was in reach.

If you start the process and it just feels uncomfortable and you don’t feel like you’re getting it right (or to be honest – if the whole thing is just getting too emotional and that energy is better spent elsewhere) then just hand it over to a pro.

I did my Mum’s myself, but the estate was simple and I’m used to doing that sort of thing. If you aren’t confident doing it or it’s likely to be contentious with other family members I’d get a professional. Some are crap, if you go down that route best to get someone recommended personally.

I did my dad’s with help from a solicitor, they were really helpful at dealing with some of the difficult institutions but also really helpful with saying when I didn’t need them and showed me how to do things my self.

When I did my grandad’s the solicitor was useless at anything but sending me letters and telling me they were billing me even more for the pleasure.

My dad was terrible at record keeping so his financial advisors were probably the most helpful but then they’d known him 30 plus years so had a really good idea of what was going on.

I did my dads (scotlandshire), it seemed like an old feudal process that was deliberately undocumented to ensure more use of the jolly expensive legal profession, it took me several goes, my local gov office were particularly unhelpful but I tried calling a few other area offices and some were really good and in the end I got it done (*simple estate).

My OH has done this for both her Dad (5 years ago) and her Mum (1 year ago).

Both near enough the same own houses, pensions, bank accounts etc and just her and her brother to benefit but what a PITA her Mum’s was.

Everything, literally everything took at least 2 go’s to get completed, if not more.

The only real difference was location of solicitors, one Home Counties and the other South Wales.

For those that say they’ve done it themselves without issue, be aware that there are 2 processes.

The IHT205 process can be completed online and is pretty straight forward for estates where there is unlikely to be a tax payment necessary.

The IHT400 is needed when affairs are more complex and/or there has been tax planning – there is likely to be an IHT payment necessary.

The IHT400 process is a series of linked PDF forms (30+ IIRC) where you select the forms you need and fill them in. It’s doable by a mere mortal, but it can be quite involved, depending on the number and types of assets that need to be reported.

I lost spent 6 months of my life a couple of years ago leading a team to try to simplify and get the IHT400 journey online. It was an interesting exercise in stakeholder management. Obvs solicitors didn’t want any changes because most folk baulk at the complexity of the process and just hire them. Unfortunately, although correctly, funding that was allocated to take it beyond discovery was redirected to COVID initiatives.

Yeah, I was in Scotland. The Web advice essentially alluded to what Towzer said. I was fine consolidating stuff but when I got to the Kafkaesque bit where I need probate to get stuff tied up but need stuff tied up with a court order to get probate I just gave up.

I don’t think the issue comes down to the money for the solicitor, its possibly your state of mind at the time, bearing its your mother rather than, say, an uncle etc. If you’re reasonably intelligent/numerical then DIY is possible, deffo sounds like it’d be IHT400 you’ll be needing so ultimately if you’re also arranging funerals etc. too then I found it tough to get your head around.

The ‘tell us once’ is good, and there is a lot of stuff you’ll have to do anyway yourself, like register the death IIRC so bring along as much info then as there can do stuff like driving licences, council tax etc. etc. which I’m not sure solicotr would do (or if you do them they can’t charge you for…).

For those that say they’ve done it themselves without issue, be aware that there are 2 processes.

The IHT205 process can be completed online and is pretty straight forward for estates where there is unlikely to be a tax payment necessary.

The IHT400 is needed when affairs are more complex and/or there has been tax planning – there is likely to be an IHT payment necessary.

This, though to be fair one you get your head around the ‘add to the total in row 36 (page 2) to the total in row 302 (page 10)’ I didn’t find it too bad.

Whatever you do, even if its just the random ‘how much are the contents of the house worth?’ finger in the air figures you invent, make a note of them as you’ll no doubt need to reference them again.

Thanks for all the comments, really useful

I’ve just completed my late father’s probate. His will was very specific and had a supporting document also witnessed by the solicitor who completed the will. After reading the downloaded documents carefully the HMRC accepted the accounts first time and granted probate. Maybe i was lucky but a few hours hard work and i am proud, as my father would have wanted me to complete everything as he would have done himself.

Good luck which ever route you decide to take and my deepest sympathy regarding your loss.