Dealing with debts and next of kin.

McKneff

The headstone is the very last thing, its not a priority at all and should maybe be a shared cost between you all or bought before the money left is shared but this will have to be decided by you all.

What an awful thing to have to go throug especially after losing your mum.

Im sorting my lot out before I go.

securityguy

jay213 wrote: »

If I get a headstone (if I can?) there will be less than £1000 left to pay other outstanding creditors, unless the above benefits and council tax don't take priority and there's some other sort of formula???

The creditors would be perfectly entitled to pursue the executor, personally, for the £1000. A headstone is not a legitimate expense from the estate if there are debts to be settled.

jay213

Okay with regards to the headstone I saw this on the gov website, that's why I thought maybe we could have used the estate to pay for the headstone... but if not, which it seems, that's cool and we'll just front the cost later on. Here's the link to the page, below's info is from.
https://www.gov.uk/valuing-estate-of-someone-who-died/valuing-debts-and-liabilities

Funeral expenses
You can deduct expenses to cover the funeral and things like:

flowers
refreshments for mourners
expenses you paid to arrange the funeral
a headstone to mark the grave

jay213

I'll get myself down to the CAB later next week, but any advice in the meantime is appreciated , as I think once they access you on the day, they make another appointment date for you to come back and see an adviser if you meet their criteria/if they deal with that topic.

jay213

securityguy wrote: »

Once you have intermeddled, even if you step back and get another executor to do the heavy lifting, you are still personally responsible for it being done properly; you can't blame the other executors. You can go "powers reserved" and leave the work to another executor, but you can only get rid of your responsibility for any problems by renunciation, which is almost impossible if you have intermeddled (and that is where the precise definition of intermeddling starts to keep lawyers in work).

So I'm afraid you are probably stuck with the responsibility. Others with more experience will be along to tell you about the preference of payments.

I know you mentioned that renunciation is almost impossible, once one has intermeddled, but is there a way to go about getting renunciation? It's a shame I didn't know about any of this before all this happened and before I intermeddled.

da_rule

Unfortunately you have gone way too far to renounce now. Making contact with creditors, moving the money into your account etc.

What you need to do is sit down and work out how much money there is in the estate then start deducting the debts based on the order of priority.

Yorkshireman99

jay213 wrote: »

I know you mentioned that renunciation is almost impossible, once one has intermeddled, but is there a way to go about getting renunciation? It's a shame I didn't know about any of this before all this happened and before I intermeddled.

HAs anyone else intermeddled as well? if so they are also liable.

securityguy

jay213 wrote: »

Funeral expenses
You can deduct expenses to cover the funeral and things like:

flowers
refreshments for mourners
expenses you paid to arrange the funeral
a headstone to mark the grave

If that's the current advice, then it's the current advice. You would need to tread very carefully on cost, however.

Yorkshireman99

Regarding the whole of this site it has no caveat about it being a definitive statement of the law which could lead the unwary into difficulty if they rely solely on what it says. With specific regard to the provision of a gravestone AFAIK this was never regarded as a nececesity of burial so did not rank above other debts but I could be wrong.

da_rule

Whilst the .gov guidelines say that a gravestone can be deducted, there are further guidelines (trying to find the link) that state funeral expenses must be proportionate to the value of the estate. If the estate is worth £10,000 you can't spend £9,000 on the funeral just to get out of paying other debts.