Certificate of Confirmation (Scotland)

organic_wanabe

I wonder if anyone can help me in my confusion?

My BIL died a few days ago and I am named as Executor in his will. I thought this would be fairly straightforward as there is no Heritable Estate (property/land). Everything goes to my sister.

The majority of the Estate is in a Current Account, Fixed Rate Bonds and Cash ISAs and amounts to just under £87,000. The Current Account and Bonds are in Joint Names but the vast majority of the funds have been provided by my BIL and so should, I think, be included in the Estate when applying for the Certificate of Completion. The only other items of worth are £100 in Premium Bonds, 3 small Whole of Life Policies totaling around £500 and a car worth around £7000.

I have done a bit of reading and it seems that any Estate over £36,000 is considered a 'Large' Estate and it is suggested that a Lawyer be used to do the necessary paperwork. I hate to think what this would cost! These funds are all that my sister will have to last her for the rest of her life as her only income will be a very small State Pension.

Can it really be so difficult that I am likely to find the paperwork beyond my capabilities?

Can anyone alert me to possible pitfalls if I decided to take on this task in order to save some outgoings?

Any advice would be much appreciated.

Keep_pedalling

This is a simple estate and the forms are not that difficult to complete, so you should have no difficulty in doing this yourself.