What happens next?

cavyslave

My son and I are the sole beneficiaries of my late Brother-in-Law's estate. I am the sole executrix but have a firm of solicitors dealing with the probate for me. I have sworn the oath and signed the form to enable the inheritance tax to be paid straight from the deceased's accounts. The solicitor has now applied for the grant of representation.

What happens next because I haven't heard anything from my solicitor since 9th March when I sent all the relevant documentation back as requested? I don't want to hassle them if it usually takes this length of time, I would like to know what's actually happening now - is my case sitting at a government probate office somewhere waiting to be processed? What is it they are actually doing?

Sorry if this all sounds daft, I've tried looking it up online but it just gives a timeline of events, not what is actually going on behind the scenes.

Thank you.

SevenOfNine

A simple one we did last year, with no inheritance tax involved, took 6 weeks. It does vary faster/slower & going through the 'middle man' solicitor might add a little to the timescale.

Patience.

Yorkshireman99

SevenOfNine wrote: »

A simple one we did last year, with no inheritance tax involved, took 6 weeks. It does vary faster/slower & going through the 'middle man' solicitor might add a little to the timescale.

Patience.

Don't expect anything for at least six months. HMR&C are notoriously slow and the solicitor will usually want to be sure that there are no unexpected claims on the estate having published the statutory notices. Each time you email or call the solicitor they will add it to the bill.

cavyslave

Six months??? Oh my goodness, why so long?

I'm on a fixed fee so hopefully nothing else will be added to my bill.

Oh, and the statutory notices aren't going to be posted until after the distribution of the estate. His house has already been broken into and vandalised once, I don't want his name and address posted at the moment.

Yorkshireman99

As I said HMR&C take ages and there is little you can do about it. It really depends on how many probate applications they have to deal with.

cavyslave

Thank you. What is going on behind the scenes at the probate office then?

Yorkshireman99

As I said it probably depends on volume of work. Estates not liable for IHT preseumeably get rubber stamped and passed back to the probate office for issue. HMR&C have no incentive to work swiftly as they already have the money. Absolutely infuriating but par for the course.

cavyslave

Oh how annoying. It didn't take them 2 minutes to work out the estate owed them over £100k in IHT though! :mad:

Yorkshireman99

Quite! Console your self with the thought that to pay £100K in IHT the amount you will get will be worth waiting for.

Crabapple

HMRC are taking 4-6 weeks to issue receipts right now. Speaking to them last Thursday they said they were processing returns submitted 14th April, but it seems to take ages for them to send anything back for no good reason.

Probate registries were expecting a lot of applications due to the increased probate fees but shouldn't be too much problem now, so 2 weeks ish there.

cavyslave

Thank you - I live in hope!