Executor - Treatment of savings a/cs

baby_boomer

What happens to the savings' accounts of the deceased between death and grant of probate?

Are they frozen with no interest added after death? Do they carry on earning interest after death? Can I even choose when to cash them in (after obtaining probate, of course)?

Most of the money in the estate I am dealing with is in fixed interest term accounts with fairly decent rates of interest.

Biggles

They will (normally -there are exceptions, it depends on the bank's T&Cs) continue to earn interest after the date of death but will no longer be paid gross of tax from that time.

They will want to close the accounts and transfer the money to the Estate account, so you will almost certainly lose any attractive fixed rates.

baby_boomer

Can you open an estate savings account - or is this impossible because there is no individual taxpayer liable for taxation?

getmore4less

The estate is taxed between death and distribution as if it was a seperate individual( but the allowances are different)

You will need to deal with HMRC on this.

baby_boomer

So a savings account for the estate could still be beneficial?

wealdroam

baby_boomer wrote: »

So a savings account for the estate could still be beneficial?

Yes.........

baby_boomer

One Building Society has requested a "will indemnity form".

They didn't send me such a form & my internet search didn't find one.

Where would I get such a document? Is it a standard legal form for all banks / BSs in this situation?

dzug1

baby_boomer wrote: »

One Building Society has requested a "will indemnity form".

They didn't send me such a form & my internet search didn't find one.

Where would I get such a document? Is it a standard legal form for all banks / BSs in this situation?

You get it from the Building Society. It's their form.

AFAIK it's not a standard legal form. Though the wording will be fairly standard, it will vary slightly between institutions.

pollypenny

My mum's ISA reverted to the standard, ie low, interest offered by the bank.

baby_boomer

pollypenny wrote: »

My mum's ISA reverted to the standard, ie low, interest offered by the bank.

Yes - the banks and BSs hardly come up trumps in these circumstances, do they?

Leeds BS will continue to pay the interest (0.1%) but my father-in-law's death negates the annual bonus (3%) which was the reason he was maintaining the account.

I've also come across this sneaky ISA tactic you refer to from Skipton BS. Why not continue to pay the same ISA rate but NET rather than gross, instead of moving all the money onto a 0.1% bog standard branch savings rate ?

It makes their letters of condolence ring rather hollow.

This all makes getting the grant of probate ASAP even more important