Probate

madbadrob

meece wrote: »

We have just returned from the probate interview in London. My father died in September, so it was quick but a simple estate. We wanted Luton, but were told unless 30 people require probate they will not send someone to a local office. We were in the office for 3 minutes. We asked how they return the probate- 2nd class post!!
When my father died my mum was asked by the DWP if she would like someone to come and talk to her about probate, she said yes. He turned up within a week of my fathers death, and was from a solicitors. He quoted just under £3000. He was also quick to point out what could go wrong and left my mum quite worried.

We have done probate for the fee and around £50 travel to London.

I agree if the estate is not simple, (one beneficiary ) it may be better to involve a solicitor, but for us it would have been a waste.

Are you saying you charged the estate 3000 for administering it?
If so are you aware that is ilegal? You can only take from the estate out of pocket expenses unless you are a professional body. If this is not what you meant I apologise
Rob

pattycake

That is not what I inferred from the post. I think she is saying that the probate was done for the fee (ie Court cost) plus travel.

gavinh1175

diamond_dave wrote: »

I have just completed probate for a family friend and it was pretty straightforward. I didn't even attend an interview with the Probate Office -I went to a local solicitor and swore an afidavit instead. Cost £5 cheaper than driving to the local office.

Same here, done probate myself. Probate office 80 miles away so I swore afidavit at solicitor's office for £7.

From sending the application off to receiving the Grant, it took about 4-6 weeks. A quick service.

gavinh1175

TonyMMM wrote: »

I believe you submit the application, stating you wish to swear at a solicitors/Commissioners for Oaths and the Probate service then send you the necessary Oath/paperwork to take with you. You then go along to your chosen solicitor, pay them a fee and send the sworn document back to Probate service.

I would recommend just arranging to swear at your nearest probate venue - usually your local county court. It doesn't cost anything extra (unlike going to a solicitor) and it took less than 5 minutes when I last did it.

It only costs £7 to swear on oath at solicitors. Its a flat rate national fee. Especially when you don't live near a probate venue, mine is 80 miles away. They shut the local probate office down.

gavinh1175

TonyMMM wrote: »

I believe you submit the application, stating you wish to swear at a solicitors/Commissioners for Oaths and the Probate service then send you the necessary Oath/paperwork to take with you. You then go along to your chosen solicitor, pay them a fee and send the sworn document back to Probate service.

I would recommend just arranging to swear at your nearest probate venue - usually your local county court. It doesn't cost anything extra (unlike going to a solicitor) and it took less than 5 minutes when I last did it.

The first paragraph is correct.

pattycake

TonyMMM wrote: »

I believe you submit the application, stating you wish to swear at a solicitors/Commissioners for Oaths and the Probate service then send you the necessary Oath/paperwork to take with you. You then go along to your chosen solicitor, pay them a fee and send the sworn document back to Probate service.

I would recommend just arranging to swear at your nearest probate venue - usually your local county court. It doesn't cost anything extra (unlike going to a solicitor) and it took less than 5 minutes when I last did it.

Thanks for the information. Going to the nearest probate office will entail my brother having to take at least half a day off work. Swearing at a local solicitors can be completed in a matter of minutes if we make an appointment. I think that will be the route we take.

fidododo

fidododo wrote: »

I did probate myself and found it straight forward ,and i hate paper work! It only took 4 weeks from filling the forms in till recieving the actual grant.A couple of things that i have'nt seen mentioned in other postings which are very important before paying out the estate.
1 - A letter from HMRC was sent to the care home and addressed to the personal representative of mum this was 8 weeks after mum died this was about claiming tax back if you wanted/could.
2 - A letter from DWP this was sent AFTER probate was granted as the probate registary notify DWP who is dealing with the estate. IF the deceased was in reciept of an income related benefit ( in this case pension credit ,even though they have copies of mums very recent bank details HUH!)then DWP have to check that the right amount of benefit has been paid.The form contains a list where you have to put down the assets of the estate. Once they have the form they will check that the deceased has been getting the correct amount of benefit and not been overpaid in which case DWP will want the money repaying from the estate.How long DWP will take to do the check IS NOT clear from the letter.:(

fidododo wrote: »

In My case from recieving the probate papers to fill in, to actualy recieving the grant of probate it took 30 days. HOWEVER if you look at my first posting in this thread you will see that HMRC will make contact after the grant is issued with regard to claiming back any tax paid to hmrc after death . This may not be worth bothering with if it's for a very small amount i prefered to save me the time and bother and put the money into the pot myself ,knowing how long winded hmrc are! BUT of coarce if a solicitor was involved they would have to put in a claim . DWP MAY contact you as executor if the deceast was claiming any income related benefits.In my case mum was claiming Pension Credit so it is now a full month since i recieved the grant of probate and i have am now told this morning that mum MAY have been overpaid.On phoning them today i can only say there IDIOTS :mad:and i fear it may be months before i can pay out anything.All this on a estate that was straight forward. It's no wonder that solicitors get a bad name for dragging matters on when they have to deal with DWP.

I have now been asked by DWP for bank statements and other savings that mum had back to october 2003, when i asked why that date, it was because, that was the date Pension credit was started to be claimed from. If any other income related benefit had been claimed they ( DWP) would ask for bank statements and any other savings details going back to when they were first claimed. Talk about making things difficult for you.!

mp86

Hi everyone,
I really hope someone can give me some advice as I really need somehelp.

My husband and I are first time buyers. We put an offer in on a 2bedroom house at the end of Jan 2013 (after months of searching). It wasaccepted!

We then advised our bank and appointed our solicitor. We were told thevendors of the house were in a chain but had found a property too, which wethought was fantastic and would only be a few months before we had our keys.

We did the survey.. which did point out some worrying aspects of thehouse such as the really bad state and badly maintained roof. The boiler wasvery old too. However, we really liked the property so this didn’t put us off. Insteadwe did ask for a small reduction in price, the vendors declined. We then askedfor a boiler check (approx £70), they declined to do this for us too.

All the while, our solicitor is speaking to their solicitor andarranging the paperwork from both sides. All that is left at this point was theindemnity policy as they couldn’t find their certificates for windows. Still okfor us and we were being patient, being accommodating and just waiting for thekeys to our home.

In March, after about 4 weeks of chasing, we had heard nothing. At theend of April after more chasing, we heard that the house our vendors werebuying, was a probate property and had yet to be granted a probate.

I was furious as the estate agent is the same for both properties andthey were aware of this when the vendors found their property in Feb 2013! Theydidn’t tell us why the delay till 2 months later because we kept chasing them.God knows when we would have found out if we didn’t chase them.

Anyway, we were told the probate had been applied for in April andwould be granted v soon. The estate agent had lied to us. The probate has onlynow been granted to the vendors vendor but there is still delays and our estateagent is telling me a different story every time. First he said the probateshould have been granted to our vendor but the executor had a issue so it hadto be granted to the vendors vendor then the house would be sold to our vendor.

Now the vendors vendor needs to discuss with her probate solicitorwhat else she needs to do before selling to our vendor.

Im really fed up and confused about the lies and lack ofcommunication.

It has been 6 months and we have been drip fed very littleinformation, which half the time is unbelievable.

I even suggested that our vendor go into renting so we can buy theproperty, which was again a no.

Not once have the estate agent/vendor been accommodating to even oneof our requests. I don’t see what the hold up is now either for our vendor tobuy their property so we can buy theirs!!

I’ve done so much research on this but cant find a situation likethis.

We have decided to look at other properties but none are coming upthat are as nice as this one and prices have shot up so much. We can affordmore but they don’t look as nice as this one and our heart is set on thisproperty too. But we need to move out by August and the way its going, the factwe have no date or real communication from the vendors or estate agent, we arenot sure that will happen.

What should we do? Any advice would be sooooooooo good right now!

John_Pierpoint

Do you know the details of the probate property and its former owner.
If you do, you can at least for a small fee check that probate/letters of administration has been granted and to whom on what date.
http://www.justice.gov.uk/courts/probate/copies-of-grants-wills
The executors, probably in the hands of a solicitor, will be meandering through the procedures, such as advertising for creditors; the only thing to encourage them to get going will be the obligation to pay council tax 6 months after probate.

Once you know the address of the deceased you could go and have a look at that house and see if there are any obvious reasons physically for the delay.

I find neighbours can be happy to spill the beans if they think they have been approached by a potential new neighbour.

vmaxnick

The Co-op have just quoted us £5600 for probate on my late fathers £158000 estate (3 benificiaries 2 executors) and that's after receiving over £3000 for the funeral. We are going to have a go at doing it ourselves.