Costs of distributing assets

Nellie_Gwynn

I'm acting as executor in my mother's estate and I'm nearly at the point of distributing the funds. Four of the beneficiaries live overseas and they want their share of the estate paid in their home currency. Does anyone know if I'm under obligation to do that and, if so, how I should treat the costs of converting and transferring money abroad? In other words should I deduct the costs from the estate first or are the individual beneficiaries obliged to meet the cost out of their share? I'm just wanting to get the maths right and not end up having to pay those costs personally because I didn't get it right.

Keep_pedalling

The cost of conversion and transfer should be born by those beneficiaries wanting to be paid in foreign currencies, so no reason why you should refuse to do so.

Yorkshireman99

Nellie_Gwynn wrote: »

I'm acting as executor in my mother's estate and I'm nearly at the point of distributing the funds. Four of the beneficiaries live overseas and they want their share of the estate paid in their home currency. Does anyone know if I'm under obligation to do that and, if so, how I should treat the costs of converting and transferring money abroad? In other words should I deduct the costs from the estate first or are the individual beneficiaries obliged to meet the cost out of their share? I'm just wanting to get the maths right and not end up having to pay those costs personally because I didn't get it right.

You just remit the funds in UK pounds and the recipient has to pay the currency conversion costs themselves. You can deduct the costs of sending the funds from the amount paid.

Curlylady

Remember that there may be a transaction fee to factor in. When I make payments abroad, it costs me £20 each transaction.

Keep_pedalling

Curlylady wrote: »

Remember that there may be a transaction fee to factor in. When I make payments abroad, it costs me £20 each transaction.

Try Transferwise, good rates and no fees. I have used the service to pay for privately rented villas in Europe with no problems.

Curlylady

Thanks for the tip, will try when I have send payments again 😊

securityguy

I'm pretty chilled about most online banking risks, but I would be very careful of Transferwise, depending on which bank I banked with. With my bank (Lloyds), at least, once you have set a recipient up for online payments, you can then make further payments to that recipient using just your password: it doesn't use a second factor like a confirmatory phone call or text message, as it does when setting the recipient up. Because Transferwise is a payment to their UK bank account, once you have made one payment, subsequent payments don't need additional confirmation. So if your banking is compromised (malware, key loggers, etc) then if Transferwise is set up as a payee, the attacker can make other transfers through Transferwise without needing to set up a new recipient, which would stop them. If I used Transferwise, I'd be tempted to delete it from my list of recipients if I wasn't going to use it for a while, or possibly after each time I used them.

Obviously, if your bank requires you to do a dance with a card reader for every payment, this isn't a risk. But if the additional confirmation is only on setting up the payment, then "one account, multiple recipients" is a risk that even someone as relaxed about these things as me would probably worry about.

getmore4less

Where do they live?

If they have a IBAN no. simple transfer

Nellie_Gwynn

Thanks everyone, I didn't expect such a great response!

My relatives live in South Africa and Australia. Getting the money to them isn't a problem, it really was just about how I account for the associated costs. If they each have to pay then the maths is much easier