Help, house sold, solicitor won't transfer the money into an account

notbritishgas

progolf1803 wrote: »

Well my nan is 85 and isn't able to deal with all this stuff so I have doing it all, I am 22 and my sister is 24 we have all never done anything of this sort before.
The solicitor knew this and has not instructed us nor advised us to get this account until 1 day ago.

Do I suspect right that your Nan has not even applied for probate?
You may need a solicitor to help with the will and probate, this will of course deplete the assets available to you and your sister.

noh

notbritishgas wrote: »

Do I suspect right that your Nan has not even applied for probate?
You may need a solicitor to help with the will and probate, this will of course deplete the assets available to you and your sister.

The house sale could not have completed without Grant of Probate.

System

notbritishgas wrote: »

Do I suspect right that your Nan has not even applied for probate?
.

Who has instructed the solicitor to arrange the sale then? You can't just walk into their office and arrange to sell someone else's house.

An executor's account is quite easy to open, especially if you go to your own bank, but you need persistence to get to speak to the right person at the bank. Our local Lloyds staff did not even know they did executors accounts, but pestering them to consult head office got the answer that this counts as a "Club and Society" account, which is a sort of generic account for everything that isn't a personal or a business account.

Thrugelmir

progolf1803 wrote: »

I am 22 and my sister is 24 we have all never done anything of this sort before.

Then seek advice.

System

progolf1803 wrote: »

It was my mums house who passed away, the will instructed my nan to be the executor and myself and sister to be beneficiaries of the estate.

As other posters have noted, your nan is the person instructing the solicitor to sell the house. Your nan currently owns it, in her capacity as executor of your mum's estate. But the solicitor can't, as far as I know, complete the sale unless your nan has the official document from the 'Probate Office' which legally designates her as your mum's executor. Has your nan got this 'grant of probate' or not?

If not, it is all very puzzling, and you need further advice, eg from the Citizens Advice Bureau in the first instance. Your nan would need help filling in the forms to get probate, but it's not that difficult.

An executor does not have to open an executor's account, but it's good practice, because it makes it transparent that the estate's money is separate. It is always essential to ensure that there are complete and accurate records of what money the executor collects from who. The executor must also either establish that no Inheritance Tax is payable, or pay this tax.

If your nan does have a grant of probate, then she (but only she) can instruct and require the solicitor to pay the sale proceeds to any account(s) she specifies. It is not up to the solicitor to question this.

As executor, your nan is answerable only to HMRC (if there is any inheritance tax to pay) and to the beneficiaries. What the will says, and who the beneficiaries are, are not matters for the solicitor who is acting for your nan in doing the form-filling to arrange the sale.

troubleinparadise

progolf1803 wrote: »

Well my nan is 85 and isn't able to deal with all this stuff so I have doing it all, I am 22 and my sister is 24 we have all never done anything of this sort before.
The solicitor knew this and has not instructed us nor advised us to get this account until 1 day ago.

You may not have done anything of this sort before, but I would have expected that over the past months of dealing with your late mother's estate that you would have learned something of the process.

I cannot believe a solicitor has taken your nan on as a client to sell a house where the issue of probate, financial compliance, HMRC and so on has not been discussed, nor has raised the matter of an executor's account if your grandmother is selling your late mother's house on behalf of beneficiaries.

Why couldn't your nan open an executor's account?

Hmmm.....

Archi_Bald

progolf1803 wrote: »

.....
I am completing my house sale tomorrow as I inherited the property from my mum who passed away in May.
.......As the will states my nan is an executor and myself and sister are beneficiaries.

Who are the other executors alongside your nan?

You won't be able to sell any of the estate. Only the executor(s) can. They might call on your help with the sale, but only they can sign any sale.

System

OP stated that

progolf1803 wrote: »

the will instructed my nan to be the [ie sole?] executor and myself and sister to be beneficiaries of the estate.

It looks as though the solicitor may have, properly, accepted instructions from the nan, as executor, to sell the house, possibly in the [misguided?] expectation that the nan, advised by the OP, was getting a formal grant of probate. If that's right, then maybe the solicitor has belatedly realized that there is no grant of probate, and is wittering about an executor's account just to stall matters.
The nan could, of course, instruct (at outrageous cost, in my experience) this or another solicitor to 'extract' probate. Or, with the OP's assistance, she could seek probate in person.
An executor sells a house in order to distribute the proceeds to the beneficiaries, not, strictly speaking, "on the beneficiaries' behalf".

jonesMUFCforever

This thread is going off tangent - no solicitor (both buyer and seller) would have left the sale get so far if probate had not been granted.

The problem probably is that the funds belong to the Executors and since there does not seem to be an Executors account the solicitors has nowhere to pay the funds into. They cannot ''just'' pay it to the nan.

As most solicitors will now be closed until new year this will not be settled immediately.
Perhaps the best way forward would for nan to instruct the solicitors to act on behalf of the executors to wind up the estate - that is pay out all bills and claims then pay out to beneficiaries.
Expect a hefty bill for this.

nwc389

I'm guessing that the OP's Mum made her will some time ago when her daughters and their Nan were much younger and that when she has died this year as their Nan was now in her 80's they got the solicitor to do the legal side of things including the probate application on behalf of the Executor . After a bereavement people don't always feel able to cope with all of the paperwork and feel that a solicitor will guide them through the process.
If people haven't dealt with this before then in all probability the same solicitor will have been used for all legal matters so I'm assuming that they would have the probate in place.
The OP has been told at the last minute to sort out an executors account when they probably expected the solicitor to sort everything out as neither the OP , her sister or their Nan has dealt with anything like this before. The bank where her mum had accounts has said they do not do executors accounts and I expect that they have found it very stressful getting an 85 year old lady to one bank let alone trailing around several to find one that would be able to open such an account !
OP , speak to the solicitor and explain the difficulty you have had , and see what can be sorted , I don't think there is a legal requirement to have an executors account as such so it might be that an ordinary account that is seperate to your Nan's accounts would do. Good Luck.