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Keep_pedalling

GDB2222 wrote: »

As others have said, the executor should lock up the house, look after the personal effects, and arrange the funeral.

The OP needs to ask a few questions to put his mind at rest:

1. Is there a will, and is it genuine?
2. Does it name the interloper as executor?
3. Was undue influence brought to bear on the aunt to make this will?

This is not an interloper, he was a friend.

It would appear that the deceased had no children so her nearest relatives are her elderly siblings, and quite frankly these are the last people you should be leaving your estate to, so her brother should not automatically think he should be a major beneficiary of the will, and although he could issue a caveat in the end he has little chance of a successful challenge, and may just end up with a large legal bill.

The trouble with families is that you cant choose them and often you find yourself being polite and friendly to people you secretly can't stand and have no intension of leaving them anything in your will.

If she trusted him to be her health and welfare POA, then it seems likely that he would be the most trusted person to arrange her funeral and be her executor.

For the moment her siblings should just back off. By all means ask to to look out for family photos ect, but don't hassle him, if as we assume he is her executor then he will have a lot on his plate, and until the funeral is out of the way he will have had no time to start to administer the estate.

securityguy

Keep_pedalling wrote: »

In the case the OP has brought up, it sounds like the LPA has been in place for some time so they probable did either have to notify or have 2 CPs, but it was never a requirement that people to be notified had to be close relatives,

Indeed. The "people to inform" regime is pointless: as silence is assent, all someone exerting undue influence would need to do is provide an address that either does not exist or which they control, and no-one would be any the wiser. When a PoA is registered, the people to inform are just written to, not even recorded delivery, so if the letter goes astray then that too is an end of it. It's also not at all clear what they can actually do if they are suspicious, at least what they can do which will not immediately sever their relationship with the donor.

There is also, of course, as you point out no obligation whatsoever that people choose the people to notify from amongst family, particularly elderly siblings and random niblings and cousins. A family that is so close they didn't notice that someone had been in hospital for two weeks, even less so. This sounds like someone who had the measure of their family and regarded their friends as being more concerned with them; a good assumption, given the family appear much more engaged with the dead person's estate than with them when they were alive.

-taff

Your aunt was being looked after by a colleaugue of her husbands, who informed the family of her hopsitalisation prior to her death, who is the exceutor of her will and who had her POA, who went round to help her when obviously her family wasn't.

Anyone can see her will once probate is granted, probably not a help to you now, but why is it better for her to leave her money to charity rather than the person who was looking after her?


As has been said, it was none of your business whether he ad POA or not, that was up to her to tell you. If she was mentally defiicient, you may have grounds for challenging it, but if not, it just sounds like sour grapes and greedy relatives.

paddy's_mum

porkypig1 wrote: »

We believe he may have taken advantage of a vunerable geriatric

If we believe this comment, aunty was "mentally deficient".

If so, one wonders how she was able to fool her solicitor, the POA authority and the hospital and why the family didn't bother, for two weeks, to follow up on the unanswered phone calls.

Ziggazee

Yes again......where there's a will there's a relative...

Yorkshireman99

Interesting that the OP has not responded further unless I have missed it.