Help with IHT205(2006) please

Apoorwoman

Advice on the above form please. If you refer to my previous posts, for which you all were most helpful (thank you), it is likely this estate will be insolvent due to gross overpayment of benefits. We have been advised by DWP that we must go to probate and then it will be sorted from there.

My query is Section 12.
Obviously 12.1 is the funeral expenses.
Regarding 12.3, we have today been invoiced for the care home fees which amount to £6,700 which obviously go under this section, but can we also add here our expenditure:

Redirection of mail, house clearance company to empty the flat, obituary in local paper, two death certificates, and the probate fee to send to Probate Registry - total amount of this is £421.40.

Can we legitimately add these in or just take our chances of reclaiming these after probate?

Your advice, as always, will be gratefully received.

dzug1

I'd be inclined to put them down anyway and argue about them if necessary once you have probate

The care home will be in the same position as the DWP though - unsecured creditor? Or was the care home contract with you rather than the deceased.

Apoorwoman

Thank you for your reply dzug1. The care homes were organised by the SS Adult Care department and the hospital, we were not involved.

MotownFox

Cost of- Redirection of mail, house clearance company costs to empty the flat, obituary in local paper, two death certificates, and the probate fee -
These are all Administration expenses NOT debts of the deceased.

So no you can not include them at 12.3. However I am unsure why you want to include them there in any case. The costs you show are valid expenses of the estate so you should be able to get the monies back from the estate.

Going back to the previous thread about the DWP claim.You will need to check it very carefully. When I worked on a Probate case about 7 years or so ago there was a similar situation that you had previously mentioned .

We had to get bank statements going back the whole period required and calculate the resulting total each year as though the actual benefit they were taking back had not been added in the first place. This benefit of course would be increasing the total assets.
What was the final assets in the end as it was a while the last time I looked at that thread. And what are they saying has been overpaid?

Apoorwoman

Net estate after funeral expenses is £72,000. I contacted DWP who said that they were only interested in the pension overpayments made after her death at the moment and I must go to probate before it can be fully investigated. Also that HB/CTB comes under the local council not DWP.

How do you work out who gets what after probate if there is insufficient funds to cover everything? As far as I can see she had capital of £16,400 when she started claiming, so there is going to be a lot of money to pay back. It does seem unfair on the care homes as at least they did something for their money.

Presumably I should put the care home fees in at 12.3?