Aunt dies - No Will - help please.

pinkshoes

Unless this niece can give a good reason to the other nieces/nephew of why she should get the entire estate, then don't send a letter giving her permission to do this! If she genuinely cared about this aunt, then she'd no doubt write to you telling you all why she feels she's entitled to the entire state, without having to share it. You could always write her a letter saying:

"The estate of <name> shall be split 5 ways between surviving nieces and nephews etc..."

If your aunt's name is not on the house deed, but she gave the niece money to pay for it, then if this amount of money was over a certain amount, did she live 7 years after giving this money? Otherwise it's subject to inheritance tax potentially... so maybe the niece knows this and fears loosing her house, therefore needs the rest of the estate to pay off the inheritance tax.

You really need to find out exactly what was left.

Nicki

There is also the possibility if the aunt was supporting the neice financially during her lifetime that she can apply to the court for a greater share of the estate than she is entitled to under intestacy rules as a dependent. This isn't my area of specialism at all, but I vaguely remember this as a possibility from my law degree many years ago.

If the estate is tiny, be careful you don't spend all of it on legal fees wrangling over who is strictly entitled to what. An amicable agreement between everyone, perhaps facilitated by a neutral third party might leave more to go round so that even if the unpopular neice gets more than a fifth share, the rest may still end up with more money than they would have done if they have to resort to the law to assert their strict legal rights.

Broken_hearted

From the sounds of it the one with the half share of the house was there caring for her aunt till she died. Its possible she is afraid the others will force her to sell her home to get the money.
Maybe it would be better to come to an agreement where this lady can stay there till she dies then the estate is sold off and divided among the other family members.

meerustar

Thanks for your advice.

As for the niece who the aunt lived with, this was almost 15 years ago and the aunt has lived in a home more or less since then (one of those like little flats). When the aunt was living with the niece she paid half to the new windows, kitchen and all the improvements done in the house. MIL remembers she also paid into the mortgage and seems the niece has since said that it was a gift (therefore, that could explain why aunts name is not on the deeds).

The niece never looked after her at all in the last 15 years and hardly visited much. My MIL and one of her sisters went weekly and took it in turns to take her to thier houses on Sundays for lunch as well as shop for her in the week.

The niece has said this morning that she just needs this letter as there is just over £500 in the bank of her aunts that she wants to withdraw and needs consent. MIL asked why she then needs a letter saying everything goes to her rather than a letter of consent and she said the bank said she has to have a letter saying she has consent for the estate so they will give it to her.

MIL asked if she could accompany her to the bank then to see what was needed and aunt called her a few names, said she was wrong not to trust her and put the phone down!

Doesn't ring true to me but then I have NO idea how all this works ... does it sound plausable or is she trying to pull the wool over everyones eyes?

Nicki

No this sounds wrong to me. I think (but am no expert) that to withdraw funds from a dead person's bank accounts that you need to have letters of administration if they are intestate. In other words, you need to have resolved all the issues surrounding the estate, including paying off all debts, before you can start messing around distributing the assets, particularly when, as here, there is uncertainty about who is entitled to what. I think you need to tell the neice that the other potential beneficiaries do not consent to her administering the estate, and agree between yourselves which of the rest of you will take on this role, and how much they can spend from the estate's assets on legal fees to help them do so.

Errata

I agree with Nicki and can't see why the bank would need letters, or to see letters, from people it doesn't know from Adam. If you know which bank it is why not give their customer services a ring and ask what procedure they follow in releasing cash belonging to someone who has died intestate.
I'm wondering how the funeral was paid for. My guess is that if auntie had insurance policies no miney would have been released by the insurance companies without something like letters of administation.