Widow has received cheque from deceased husbands Shares company.How can she cash it?

katesheet

A Deceased passed away 4 years ago, and his widow wife lives alone in the property which they both lived in, which has no mortgage, deeds were in both persons names (husband and wife) but as he passed away the deeds are in her name.

There is a will, but there is no probate, no probate has ever been applied for or made by the widow.

as far as previous bank accounts of the deceased they didn't have much funds in.


A cheque from the deceased share companies (which he had shares in) has been received in the post by the widow for £4000,

the cheque is made out in her deceased husbands name.


£4000 from a company her husband had/has shares in, which is the company BG Group PLC, Royal Dutch shell PCL.


What are the options that the widow can cash in the cheque at her bank?
When he was alive their bank account was in join name but i believe since he passed it is in her single name, as they remove a deceased person from a bank account right ?


What are the legal procedures and options she has, so that she can cash in this cheque ?

Does she need to contact the company to re-issue a cheque in her name?


Can she just present the cheque in the bank with a death certificate and a copy of the will as an option?

or would it be a procedure to transfer the shares in her name? This is under £5000 so would a grant of probate be needed? or letters of administration be needed ?




How many options has she got to cash in this cheque? and how long would these procedure options take?



have also seen these options, to fill out these forms

https://www-uk.computershare.com/investor/formscatalogue.asp

and on 'company name' enter BG Group

it shows these 3 forms,

UK Small Estates Form - Fee (Share Value over £100 up to £5,000)
UK Small Estates Form - Fee (Share Value over £5,000 up to £20,000)
UK Small Estates Form - No Fee (Share Value under £100)

here is one of the forms:
https://www-uk.computershare.com/Content/download.asp?docId={C2312811-70A7-4114-A0C0-511533193167}&cc=UK&lang=en&bhjs=1&fla=1&theme=cpu


would this above form be required to be filled in and sent - without a probate being required ?

dzug1

If she fills the form in they will reissue the cheque in her name


Assuming that the £4000 is the total value of the holding - if it's just a dividend payment then the value of the shares themselves will be higher and may require probate.

wwl

This will be from the recent takeover, not a dividend - I got a cheque from them yesterday.
If the account was previously in joint names, it would be worth going into the bank (not phoning!) and asking them as they may be able to pay it in. This happenned with my late father's account, but it was only a few weeks afterwards, not years.

If all else fails you can still apply for probate, and if it's the only option it would be well worthwhile for £4k - the only cost would be the probate fee - don't recall the amount offhand but under £200 I think.

brewerdave

The registrars (Equitini) may well insist on probate to transfer the name of the shareholder for the new Royal Dutch Shell shares .
If the cheque was for £4000+ then the husband must have held at least 1044 BG shares which were worth ~ £11000 at the point of takeover.
The resultant Royal Dutch Shell Shares would now be worth ~ £7500.
What has been happening to the regular dividends from BG over the past 4 years ? Have they been paid into the widow's bank account or have they been held by the registrars as failed payments??
The other Q I would ask of the widow is whether he held any other shares when he died -there could possibly have been IHT issues.

brewerdave

Further thought - the original "Tell Sid" British Gas shares have been split into at least three seperate Companies - BGPLC (just taken over by Shell), Centrica (parent Co. of British Gas retail) and Lattice (which was Transco then merged with National Grid) -did he still hold any of these shares ? If so, there could be a pretty large sum of money tied up in these shares!!

...and what bout the dividends from these Cos???

Savvy_Sue

brewerdave wrote: »

there could possibly have been IHT issues.

Not at this stage if the will (proved or not) left everything to the wife.

However, not applying for probate on the husband's death makes dealing with the wife's estate after her death potentially problematic. If there's a property to sell, they might need to apply for probate for both before being able to sell. And not knowing the value of husband's estate passed to wife means it's very difficult to know the IHT exemption limit available to the wife's estate.

No skin off her nose, obviously, but whoever is dealing with it might want to bear this in mind!

Who are the executors of husband's will? Is there a reason not to proceed?