Wills and Probate

(not rhyming slang!)

My Dad’s cousin has died, and he is executor (although cousins they grew up living in the same house together in the war so more like a sister)

Her husband died some time before and she has no children, just 3 nephews/nieces and then grand-N/N’s

Her estate is going to be worth about £650K – mainly house and then ca 125K of savings, mainly premium bonds. This is all in the will and going to the family minus some small charity gifts and a bit to my Dad.

As executor he’s been in touch with the will writers to get a proper copy, etc., he already had an unsigned copy as she knew she was terminally ill so there’s no hidden surprises. There will be inheritance tax to pay, of course.

The question is whether he should attempt to execute the will himself – the will firm have said they can do it as a service but they want 1.5% + VAT on the whole estate, so about £12K for what might not be that complex a task.

My Dad’s very smart, albeit 83, and the family are not pressuring him either way (in the end it’s their £12K) but he feels it’s a lot for not a lot. And he’s not exactly busy….

Has anyone done probate and executed a will themself, any advice? What could go wrong? Or should they swallow the cost – in which case, is 1.5% reasonable, or do you shop around, and what sort of commission is normal?

Follow up – she also had some jewellery, nothing of any great value but quite a number of pieces. She left a document (not part of her will) with who should get what from it for sentimental value, but does this form part of the estate or do effects of little absolute value come into another category?

Anyone either executed a will or been in this situation and decided to use a specialist – thoughts?

My wife is currently in the process of acting as executor on her aunt’s estate.  She’s doing all the probate work herself, mostly to avoid the lawyers fees.

Only just at the stage of requesting probate, so can’t give you any guidance on whether the process is succesful, but there appears to be some key personalty traits you need

1) Eye for detail – numbers, process etc

2) Exceptionaly high levels of patience (it takes a looong time)

I believe that seperate document on small items is referred to as chattels, and yes they are part of the estate

Like everything – you can DIY or you can just pay someone. When my mum died her estate was fairly straightforward – amount was over IHT and was just to be split between me and my sisters. However, to find every last bit of savings, life insurance, pensions etc still took bloody ages and the amount of form filling the solicitors had to do was immense.

The biggest advantage, imo, of using a lawyer is getting all the closing statements from financial institutions. They are very good at being really slow around probate – we need this form, that form, death certs in triplicate etc and a lawyer seems to get quicker results than you doing it in person.

Honestly – I could have done it myself but for ease of hassle I just would rather pay someone to get it off my desk. 1.5% is about the going rate also. As per the do you own conveyancing thread though – DIY is possible and you will save money but not necessarily time and there are various areas where HMRC etc expect perfection.

as a quick edit re: the cost. Once split between the four of us we did not actually receive that much less each..

My brother and I did it all ourselves when our mum died. It was simple for us as she only had a house that was below any inheritance tax threshold and she had no other investments or assets so about as simple as you can get so paperwork was really simple and no need for a solicitor. However if you’re over the tax threshold and there are other investments and assets I think it could get very complicated quickly. Not so complicated as you couldn’t do it but would just be alot more work to work through than our case. No harm in getting the forms ourselves and taking a look at what’s required before committing to paying someone else to do it.

12k + Vat – Look elsewhere. We’d probably charge about 2-3k + Vat for that.

who are you – do you want a phone call from my Dad in the next few days……

The IHT400 process, which your dad will have to use, is an old school complicated set of digital pdf forms. There’ll be some tooing and froing around valuations etc, but an initial submission and payment of any IHT on liquid assets will open up the probate process.

12k + vat is too much, listen to JasonDS, but I wouldn’t recommend my 83 year old dad tried to do it himself.

probate = agree a fee beforehand. I think for an estate of £650k it’s well worth paying. My wife (a solicitor though in completely unrelated areas) did her mother’s not that long ago, which was pretty straightforward but still caused her some worry (your’re not allowed to remove staples when photocopying a will, stuff like that, or it’ll bounce back). Also, £650k might not be over inheritance tax threshold as married couples can share their allowance, even if they died years apart. So worth getting advice. Your father will still be executor with a firm doing probate for £4k tops.

We use a rather nice case management system that really does cut down the time and effort involved. Once the estate is assessed we plonk in all the assets and liabilities etc and the system then generates all the IHT and probate forms etc.

One other point to note is that the HMCTS probate lot are hugely under pressure and even when you get to the point of applying for probate things are taking much longer than expected – bear this in mind if you are going to be putting the house on the market.

Also, £650k might not be over inheritance tax threshold as married couples can share their allowance, even if one of them’s dead.

This is very important. I executed my mother and father’s estates. Dad died first and I used his allowance to bring Mum’s down to £0. IHT 402 is what you need. I DIY’d it with no problems.

12k + Vat – Look elsewhere. We’d probably charge about 2-3k + Vat for that.

2nd that. We used a solicitor for my mother-in-laws estate (approx £500k) as there may have been a contest to the will. We’ve been billed about 3.5k inc VAT for managing the will, estate and conveyancing on the sale of the house.

I did this late last year and it was a bit of a hybrid. No way I would pay £12K. I dealt with probate but then used a financial adviser to complete the IHT forms for £500. I suppose with hindsight I paid him £500 to make sure the right numbers went in the right boxes as I did all the research to get the numbers in the first place. So probably could have done it all and saved £500 but it was reassuring to have a 2nd pair of experienced eyes on it especially as it was quite a complex estate

On a tangential point / is appointing a professional executor such as a solicitor something you can do at the point of making your will do you know? Strikes me out would be a lot more sensible to do so than having various executors who may then get it done elsewhere anyhow.

Yes, you can appoint a solicitor if you wish.

Ta – that might make life a bit easier.

I did it for my Mum’s will but paid a solicitor to answer a couple of queries I had and do the land registry stuff.

Most of the hassle is gathering up the paperwork which you generally have to do anyway. I’d take the approach of doing what (your Dad) is happy with – he may well be happy to make lists, gather info, read through and do a first draft of the forms
…
and then if/when he gets stuck, call a pro in for odds and sods like @jamesgarbett did.

The advantage is that you’re not waiting around for solicitors to pull their finger out for dumbass straightforward stuff (which otherwise is ALWAYS an issue IME) just for stuff where you really don’t have a scoobie anyway.

I did it myself when my gran died. Grandad died a few years back so I could combine their allowances which meant no inheritance tax to pay as it was just the house and a few quid in the bank plus a few shares.
As said before, hardest bit is getting all the paperwork together. The rest is fairly straightforward online if you take your time to read it properly.

We must have been really lucky then. MIL died just after Christmas. Mrs Scape engaged a solicitor. Probate was granted exactly eight weeks after she died. Total cost £1,500.

Shop around. We were quoted between £4k and £10k by some.

If you’ve been following the flat-conveyancing thread it will come as no surprise that I will advocate DIY probate – for my late father-in-law, my wife handled it all. It was safely under the IHT threshold in that case, so just a rather extended form-filling process and exercise in patience.

However that did rely on the documentation already being in a good state, relatively simple finances, no risk of contesting the will, and from the executor, a determined attitude and the aforementioned attention to detail and flair for admin. It’s all nearly complete in less than three months after the death… the flat sale is the last element and that’s almost done (fingers crossed!)

On a tangential point / is appointing a professional executor such as a solicitor something you can do at the point of making your will do you know? Strikes me out would be a lot more sensible to do so than having various executors who may then get it done elsewhere anyhow.

AIUI that’s a recipe for potentially high fees! It’s messy (involving the courts) to challenge an executor – it may be better to appoint a family member as executor but leave express instructions that you expect them to appoint a professional to assist (thus removing any guilt), I have a relative that did that, and knowing her time was nearly up left quite detailed records at the local solicitors. In many ways her much larger estate was a lot easier to sort our than a younger family member who died unexpectedly with no meaningful assets and no will!