Probate advice please

pdw204

My mum passed away recently and I am executor of her will. I have been to see our solicitor who said that the situation is simple enough for me to consider getting probate without their help. Mum’s estate including her house is left to me as sole beneficiary.

I am considering applying for probate but there are a few things that are confusing me:

• My dad died 14 yrs ago. He did not leave a will and everything passed to his wife, my mum. There is mention on the Probate form of nil rate IHT transferring from one partner to the other. Not sure how I find out if this is applicable. (However I don’t think Mum’s estate as it stands would be liable for IHT).
• I guess the house needs to be valued – do I have to arrange this through an Estate Agent – or can I make an educated guess using house prices in the area?
• If I encounter problems with Probate, can I throw the towel in and go back to the solicitor?
• What happens with the transfer of the house after Probate has been granted?

Apologies if these are silly questions – also for the lengthy post (I should have asked the solicitor at my interview with them).

Thank you in advance for any replies.

Crabapple

The first step will be to value your Mother's estate. If it is under the IHT threshold (£325k) then you don't need to worry about the transfer of a nil-rate band.

For the house, what is best depends on how close to the IHT threshold you are. If you are over you should get a formal valuation. However, the simplest thing might be to get an Estate Agent to do an appraisal - say that you are thinking of selling so want to know what the property could achieve.

You have a good Solicitors there, if they are happy to advise that you can deal with things yourself! You absolutely can go back and ask them to deal with some or all of the process for you if you want.

Once you have a Grant of Probate, the house needs to be transferred at the Land Registry. They have online forms and guidance so this is also something you could do yourself, or you can go back to the Solicitors and ask them to do it. There's a fee payable to the Land Registry based on the value of the property, and obviously if you use a solicitor they will charge but it should be a fixed fee job.

Crabapple

Just thinking, if you are planning on selling the house rather than keeping it, there's normally no need to transfer it first, you can just sell as Executor using the Grant.

pdw204

Thank you so much for your advice.

I am hoping to eventually live in the house and my son to live where we are now. That's another query! Whether to sign our house over to him (he is very sensible and trustworthy!), or leave both houses in my name - I will probably raise that as another post.

Land_Registry

This is the link to our online guidance as mentioned.

Where there is no recorded will it is often Letters of Administration which are issued by the Probate Service but that is much the same thing from a registration perspective.

Once you have probate/letters of administration you can deal with the property, which means you can sell it to a third party, assent it to the beneficiary or gift (still a transfer) to someone else such as your son.

The registration process is quite straightforward but the other issues around IHT and what are the right options for both you and your son are outside of our remit as you would expect. It is always best to clarify what options are available and to then consider your own will(s) of course.