Selling Santander shares after death

shopndrop

My father passed away last month and had 300 Santander shares which we now need to liquidate.
After contacting Santander today, they advise that as there is no probate, (he didn't leave much money) that we need to use their small estates scheme which will cost £74. Does anyone know if there is any other way around this without paying £74 so that mum can have this money instead?

dzug1

Instead of selling them get them transferred into your Mum's name. If that doesn't incur the small estate charge, that is. Don't know if it does

She can then sell them - probably for less than that charge.

There's nasty Spanish paperwork involved though

Apart from that - no ideas.

datostar

dzug1 wrote: »

Instead of selling them get them transferred into your Mum's name. If that doesn't incur the small estate charge, that is. Don't know if it does

She can then sell them - probably for less than that charge.

There's nasty Spanish paperwork involved though

Apart from that - no ideas.

As the holder (deceased) cannot authorise a transfer of his shares, it still comes back to the executor or personal representative to deal with this. If the Santander shares are the only part of the estate likely to incur any charges to realise the asset, the small estate charge is still cheaper than obtaining probate. Equiniti (the Registrars) deal with any Spanish paperwork and the client doesn't see any of it. I was my late father's executor and he had Santander shares too. They were transferred into me and my wife's name without any fuss at all and with no charge - I did have Grant of Probate though because of other assets in the estate. Various forms for dealing with this can be downloaded from Equiniti. I have since 'bought out' my wife's part of the joint holding and again the shares were transferred into my sole name with no problems.

shopndrop

Thank you datostar. Will look at Equiniti website and see if I can transfer them into my name. I am executor, but we are not doing probate as estate is so small, hence the annoyance at paying the £74, mum could really do with this towards funeral costs.
We paid for funeral and mum is paying us some of it back out of her pension each week. She couldn't even claim help with funeral costs as I work 14 hours per week, so told not entitled to any help as family should pay funeral costs if mum can't afford it.