How to find out whats going on in will

Macca83_2

lizeratsi wrote: »

I think I would tell my husband that I had done this. My husband is treated beneath contempt by his family, and his father controls him with money. If he wasnt entitled i probably wouldnt mention it, if he was, i would wait and see if he got anything.

What I am triyng to understand though is what chanels it goes through, for instance the aunt has been in control of everything, can she pass my husbands share from the grandfather to my husbands father for him to then dole out, as he wishes, but surley that would be illegal?

I personally wouldnt have thought it legal for my husband to have been given money by the power of attorny BEFORE he the grandfather died....


they are not shady dodgy characters but they are extremly tight and controlling characters. which is why my husband is out of the loop, if my husband is entitled then I will ask him if he has received anything and if not, chase it.

How about you approach your husband with the information you have learnt in obtaining a copy of the will and then ask him if he would want to follow it up.

He may not want to. To be honest He doesn't sound like he wants to know based on your original post

nom_de_plume

lizeratsi wrote: »

......

I personally wouldnt have thought it legal for my husband to have been given money by the power of attorny BEFORE he the grandfather died.....

It is perfectly acceptable for the holder of the PoA to give out gifts under certain circumstances. If, for example, the grandfather regularly gave out gifts of cash on birthdays, etc. and there was sufficient cash available, this would be fine. Similarly, if he was likely to have given your husband some cash to say help pay for a car this would also be fine although more open to scrutiny if questions were later asked about such a gift.
Search something like 'power of attorney gifts' for more reading on the subject.

dzug1

lizeratsi wrote: »

What I am triyng to understand though is what chanels it goes through, for instance the aunt has been in control of everything, can she pass my husbands share from the grandfather to my husbands father for him to then dole out, as he wishes, but surley that would be illegal?

If your husband has been left money in the will or is entitled to it under the intestacy rules then the executor(s) or Administrator(s) must pay it to him.

Anything else would be illegal - but illegal things happen. If they have your husband would have to go to court to rectify it.

Flugelhorn

probably find that the will leaves the estate to the children in equal shares and if the child is predeceased then to their children.. bit like intestacy would do.
I never expected to get anything from grandparents - though I know some people do skip a generation for various reasons

John_Pierpoint

I am more sympathetic to your situation, as a result of my own experience.
My father died a few weeks after my 21st birthday and his own mother had died some 12 months earlier.
I felt completely frozen out of the situation by my parent's generation, perhaps because back in the 1960's they came from the 3 taboos culture: we don't talk about sex, money or death, or perhaps (more cynically) because they went "OMG that long haired drop out is the key-stone to this structure".

My father had not bothered to make a will, so it all revolved round grandmother's will. Perhaps she was the real judge of character having seen her own brother drink himself to death and her son having difficulty settling down to a steady job.

If you visit Holborn in London, you can get a copy of the will (if any) and the probate documentation (complete with a possibly misleading valuation of the deceased's wealth) while you wait - and the staff, who refer to the documentation as the "admon" to avoid the misunderstanding of a will being needed for probate, are quite sympathetic if there is something you don't understand [In my day it was Somerset House; and I had to spend all afternoon searching, the first grandmother I found (exactly the same names) turned out to be worth £100 - fortunately computers have speeded things up a bit though "Smith" must still be a bit of a nightmare].

The last family estate I sorted out was 4 years ago but during that I discovered some HMRC statistics (that organisation is the link pin pin, there is no "admon"/probate until you have arranged satisfactory arrangements to pay the tax due if any). These showed that the majority of estates were handled within 12 months and nearly all the rest within 24 months only a few percent (say 4%) dragged on into year three.

So get a copy of the "admon" (or call back monthly or leave a fee for a standing check) then if you need it, someone on here will have a go at explaining anything you don't understand.

[I got half a dozen pages of hard to read photocopied will including several codicils "one of which included the cryptic phrase " ........because other arrangements have been made". Which years later a tax man and I agreed signified a semi secret trust .]

Personally I would be hurt if I were your husband and you sneaked off and came back with a fait accompli - I am sure you can discuss the three taboos with him - and he will realise it was all his idea anyway.;)

madbadrob

John can you explain to me why your dads death and not leaving a will resulted in revolving around your grandmothers will. Your father dying intestate would have meant that your mother would have gotten everything (up to a certain amount) assuming they were still married and then you and any full blood siblings. There was no reason for your grandmothers will to even come into it. Likewise because your father lived for 28 days after your grandmothers death the will of your grandmother would have still had to pay into your father estate and therefore to the next in line under intestacy laws.

Rob

John_Pierpoint

My grandmother died only a year before my father, she left a long rambling will, with various codicils [I don't know if this was her fault or the fault of the solicitor who was only too happy to write more legal documentation to reflect the ramblings of an elderly woman].
Grand mother tried to leave everything to various beneficiaries including a life interest in her valuable house to my "maiden" great aunt, BUT her estate included some valuable assets that could not be realised partly because she only owned half of them, and partly because getting on for 50 years ago the post war government had severely restricted freedom of contract between landlords and tenants - rights then that still apply to this day. Basically you cannot get rid of such tenants for as long as their family manage to pay the minimal rent.
However this meant that there was death tax to pay but no mention of this priority beneficiary in the will and no ready cash to pay it. Perhaps the stress of this situation contributed to my dad's death and the mess left behind when his debts were added to the mix.
[Actually it was slightly more complex than that. In reality to fully understand the situation, you needed all the wills going back to great great grandfather's, when he migrated from rural poverty to try his luck in London saving gin alcoholics from their ruin by selling them beer, but I have to draw the line somewhere]

madbadrob wrote: »

John can you explain to me why your dads death and not leaving a will resulted in revolving around your grandmothers will. Your father dying intestate would have meant that your mother would have gotten everything (up to a certain amount) assuming they were still married and then you and any full blood siblings. There was no reason for your grandmothers will to even come into it. Likewise because your father lived for 28 days after your grandmothers death the will of your grandmother would have still had to pay into your father estate and therefore to the next in line under intestacy laws.
Rob

Yes you are right back then the widow got the first £8k odd, then a life interest in half the remainder. We ended up with a house worth £11.5k, because the mortgage was paid off by a mortgage protection policy plus debts of about £8k.
Perhaps because grandmother had realised that her darling son was financially irresponsible, she had left him only a life interest in her estate, but a beneficial interest still counts for death taxes.

My father's business eventually sold for about £8k but not in cash but in the form of an annuity paid to my mother of about £750 a year.



http://www.midlandspubs.co.uk/glossary/beer-houses.htm