Reaching the end of life

Jonny989

Not really sure where to post this but hopefully somebody can help. My father is terminally ill and reaching the last few weeks of his life. He and my mother made wills many years ago leaving everything to each other except for a couple of sentimental items which were left to other members of the family.


When they made the wills the solicitor was named as executor and my father is now worried that this could cost a lot of money and wondering whether he should change it to family members instead. I've no idea if this is a sensible move - is anybody able to advise?

xylophone

Is your father well enough to speak to the solicitor about the matter?

kidmugsy

The advantage of having a child as executor is that he can hire a solicitor to do the work, at an agreed rate, and fire her if she's dilatory or incompetent.

(Swap pronouns if you like.)

atush

Sorry to hear of this.

If he is of sound mind, i'd say yes get the executor changed if you would like to take up the job. If the current solicitor won't make a house call, get another.

bigadaj

Good advice above the other thing to be concerned about is the size of the estate. There is often little extra work involved in a large estate than a small one, though this is dependent on the exact nature of the finances and beneficiaries and a small estate can be more complicated than a large one.

Anyway my point is that solicitors should be charging on the basis of a lump sum at a stated hourly rate, rather than percentage fees. The difference between these obviously becomes more significant the larger the estate becomes.

jamesd

One approach is to give away the sentimental items while alive, with signed documents saying so at the time they are given. The solicitor can witness such signings. Then the remaining beneficiary, the wife, can also be made executor with no remaining conflict of interest potential. Approximate market valuations should be noted, and for uncommonly valuable items a formal valuation, since these may be of value sufficient to be a factor for inheritance tax.

The wife can then take help from children and advice as needed from the solicitor, with little chance of anyone contesting the will. Ideally the children would be present at the signing of the new will, or a codicil instead, if he solicitor recommends that as cheaper or better for some reason, so that they can be satisfied that he's of sound mind and deliberately doing it, to reduce the chance of disagreement later from those who are most likely to have alternative interest.

A solicitor has the very significant advantages that they will be willing to do the work and will want to carry out the instructions in the will, two things that are not guaranteed from family members.

Does your father have any pensions that have not been claimed yet (don't immediately claim them!)? Any that are in payment? It's quite often possible to make very substantial improvements in the position of those inheriting, depending on the exact types of pensions and whether any income or lump sum has been taken from them. Knowing whether he's 75 or older would also be useful.

With all types of pension there can be death benefits. These are normally paid outside the estate at the discretion of pension trustees because this combination exempts them from inheritance tax and means that payment can often be faster than dealing with an estate. Because there is some discretion, it's useful for him to contact the trustees while still alive and make his wishes clear to them while they can still ask him questions.

If the total value of all property owned by both of them is more than around £650,000 it's worth considering how best to deal with inheritance tax. Some forms of planning while he's still alive can help with this but we don't know enough about the situation to make comments beyond this at the moment. £650,000 because each person gets a £325,000 allowance and this can now be carried forward to use after the second death if it wasn't all used with the first.

mania112

You can ask the Solicitor to renounce their role. If the solicitor feels they will have trouble being paid for their service, i'm sure they'd be quite cooperative.

But, as said above, if your father is able he can amend his will.

Jonny989

Thanks everybody.


jamesd - My father has a very small company pension which, I think, pays a couple of thousand pounds a year. No idea if there's any death benefit though. He's 75. Everything that he has is jointly owned with my mother. There's a few thousand pounds in savings and their home which is probably worth around £400K.


I'd thought that we might not even need to both with probate as everything is in joint names and has been left to my mother. I guess the pension may complicate that.


Thanks again.

jamesd

The pension should be easy enough and definitely won't involve probate, one of the advantages of pensions. Best for the wife or him to contact the pension scheme administrators and ask about death benefits. It should be very simple because if there are any, they would go to the wife unless there's a pretty strong reason for that not to happen, like impending divorce or dependent children of another person. Not really likely, so it should be easy.

It's pretty common for there to be something like a 50% pension for a spouse. Not always, just to give you some idea. Could be nothing.

The value of the estate means that inheritance tax is not going to be a factor but records of values should be kept, notably for the home.

It's possible that probate won't be needed, and in particular that making some gifts now could eliminate the possible need. Have a read of this.

Now is a pretty good time to get some advice from the solicitor who can give an opinion about whether probate will be needed. Also good to check with banks and building societies that they are content for there to be no probate, or if one isn't content, to close that account and move the money while he's alive to eliminate the issue.

As estates go this one should be pretty straightforward, even more so if a bit of cleaning up of possible issues is done now. But that's of less importance than him doing what he wants while he can, since there don't appear to be any particularly tough issues to deal with, just routine and easy to deal with things, to the extent that anything is "easy" at such times - not at all.