Confusion regarding probate.

mushymatt

Tuesday_Tenor wrote: »

Actually, on re-reading your post it is possible that the house and cash together might be close to the INDIVIDUAL IHT tax threshold.

However, married couples have an allowance of £325K EACH. Any allowance not used up by the first to die, gets passed to the estate of the second to die. So the IHT threshold for your mother's estate MIGHT be as much as £650K. It will be important to know what happened to your father's estate, which could be one of several scenarios:

Varying from:
- Everything was jointly owned, so passed straight to the survivor, your mother. There was no 'estate' as such, no probate was needed at all, no IHT was payable, so the whole £325K of your father allowance is avalable to your mother's estate.

to
- Your father left a considerable estate on which a large amount of IHT was paid so leaving no, or little, allowance to be put towards your mother's estate.

So you will need to find out what happened when your father died: Did he leave an estate? Did it go to probate? Was any IHT paid?

My father died about 8 years back and everything went to my mum. Now that mums gone everything passes to me and my sister (Im named as executor in the will, not my sister - but the estate is to be split equally between both of us).

As for as assets go -

The house I would say is valued at about £220-250k (based on next door selling for £200K a month back (but its has one less room, and no car port, we also have a bigger garden).

And money in the bank is approx £34k

So total value of the estate would come in at under £300k to be split between me and my sister.

so to my mind that would be zero tax?

troubleinparadise

That would be zero IHT, but there may be income tax to be paid depending on your Mum's personal situation.