Probate gone wrong

Froggitt

When my father passed away, my mum did the probate, selling a number of his investments to cash. Out of the blue, five years later, one of them just contacted my mum, saying "we never received your form, here it is again, fill it in and we will send the money". At the time, she had received a statement with a value of £0.00, so assumed she had received the money. She never received the original form.

The value today is 50% more than the value five years ago, however the appear to be offering the cash value as of five years ago. She has obviously lost five years of growth by it sitting in some suspense account unbeknown to her. She is, lets say, an inexperienced investor.

Surely they should have noticed this before now and given my mum notice that the transaction had not been completed eg a cash on hand annual value..

Do you think she should be given today's value, rather than the five years ago value?

xylophone

What sort of investment is this?

bowlhead99

Froggitt wrote: »

At the time, she had received a statement with a value of £0.00, so assumed she had received the money. She never received the original form.

The value today is 50% more than the value five years ago, however the appear to be offering the cash value as of five years ago. She has obviously lost five years of growth by it sitting in some suspense account unbeknown to her.

Do you think she should be given today's value, rather than the five years ago value?

Today's value of WHAT? The statement said the value of the investment was £0.00 so presumably the value of that plus 50% is still £0.00.

You have not explained it very well but I'm assuming:

- you requested the investment be sold because its owner had died, it was sold, so the remaining value of the investment holding was zero (and a statement for £0.00 received to that effect), and the value of the associated proceeds of sale was £X.

- your mum thought she had received the £X in her own bank account but actually she did not because they had not received her form.

- so the £X sat in their bank account and your mum didn't mind because she had as much money as she needed.

- today they have identified that the £X is still in their bank account and want to give it to her. Good for them, and well done for being honest rather than just pocketing it and writing it off as a dormant account.

Surely they should have noticed earlier, you say? Well surely your mum should have noticed earlier that as executor/administrator of your father's estate, she had not collected in all of his assets?

By not noticing that she had failed to collect together all the cash in her own bank account, she has missed opportunities for investment growth. However, if she had invested them in some asset that went down by 50% instead of up by 50%, she has been saved from a huge loss. So, perhaps it is fortunate that as "She is, lets say, an inexperienced investor" she was not given the cash five years ago.

Certainly you would not expect the company, having disposed of the investment and received cash waiting for her form, to then go and re-invest that cash without any further instruction from her, and hope for it to go up in value rather than down in value until she wants to collect it. Imagine if they had done that and it went down. You would be on here screaming blue murder. So, it's good that they preserved the 5-years-ago-value in cash. And given they preserved it in cash, where do you think they would be able to go and magic 50% out of thin air from, to give to her along with the cash?

I think you are deluded if you expect to get growth on an investment she specifically wanted them to sell after its owner died. But perhaps you have simply not articulated the circumstances very well. As xylophone says, might be useful to explain what the investment was, and give us more details, and see if that changes the outcome.

Froggitt

xylophone wrote: »

What sort of investment is this?

Its an equity fund.

Froggitt

bowlhead99 wrote: »

Today's value of WHAT? The statement said the value of the investment was £0.00 so presumably the value of that plus 50% is still £0.00.

You have not explained it very well but I'm assuming:

- you requested the investment be sold because its owner had died, it was sold, so the remaining value of the investment holding was zero (and a statement for £0.00 received to that effect), and the value of the associated proceeds of sale was £X.

- your mum thought she had received the £X in her own bank account but actually she did not because they had not received her form.

- so the £X sat in their bank account and your mum didn't mind because she had as much money as she needed.

- today they have identified that the £X is still in their bank account and want to give it to her. Good for them, and well done for being honest rather than just pocketing it and writing it off as a dormant account.

Surely they should have noticed earlier, you say? Well surely your mum should have noticed earlier that as executor/administrator of your father's estate, she had not collected in all of his assets?

By not noticing that she had failed to collect together all the cash in her own bank account, she has missed opportunities for investment growth. However, if she had invested them in some asset that went down by 50% instead of up by 50%, she has been saved from a huge loss. So, perhaps it is fortunate that as "She is, lets say, an inexperienced investor" she was not given the cash five years ago.

Certainly you would not expect the company, having disposed of the investment and received cash waiting for her form, to then go and re-invest that cash without any further instruction from her, and hope for it to go up in value rather than down in value until she wants to collect it. Imagine if they had done that and it went down. You would be on here screaming blue murder. So, it's good that they preserved the 5-years-ago-value in cash. And given they preserved it in cash, where do you think they would be able to go and magic 50% out of thin air from, to give to her along with the cash?

I think you are deluded if you expect to get growth on an investment she specifically wanted them to sell after its owner died. But perhaps you have simply not articulated the circumstances very well. As xylophone says, might be useful to explain what the investment was, and give us more details, and see if that changes the outcome.

Thats pretty much it.

I would agree with you about not giving the current value of the funds including the 50% uplift IF they had told her they were holding on to her money.

At the time, she saved cash in an account paying around 5%. So that's 25% increase in value she has missed out on.

Surely some duty of care here.....letting her know they haven't received their form back......sending annual cash account value.

Maybe she should have noticed she hadn't had the money.....she missed it. But dad took care of all finances, she saw money going into her account and had made the obviously invalid assumption that as the money had been requested as part of probate, then it would be sent as her other investments had been.