Scottish Widows Overpaid Annuity

Julio7

Hi,
Dont know if anyone can offer advice here but my Mum passed away 5 weeks ago after a long hard battle and now we get a letter from Scottish widows claiming she was overpaid on 2 Annuities held by my deceased Dad by 50% over a period of 8 years.
He died December 2008 and we informed all the relevant channels including Scottish widows and HMRC at the time in 2008/ early 2009.
My mum received certain benefits, very small pensions and annuities until her recent death.
Scottish widows have now sent this letter claiming she was over paid by 50% for eight plus years but in their letter they say they found a copy of my dads death certificate but unfortunately they (scottish widows) failed to pass this information on internally to the relevant departments. They apologize for this mistake but what to claim back the overpayment which is almost 4000 pound from her estate.
Her estate is no more than 5000 pound and will be empty (zero) after funeral costs and outstanding nursing home fees have been paid.

Can anyone offer any advice on this issue as it was clearly an internal Scottish Widows error which led to the overpayment given they admit to locating the original death certificates provided????
Should it be paid back or should it be written off?

Be grateful for some advice

Julio

Yorkshireman99

Julio7 wrote: »

Hi,
Dont know if anyone can offer advice here but my Mum passed away 5 weeks ago after a long hard battle and now we get a letter from Scottish widows claiming she was overpaid on 2 Annuities held by my deceased Dad by 50% over a period of 8 years.
He died December 2008 and we informed all the relevant channels including Scottish widows and HMRC at the time in 2008/ early 2009.
My mum received certain benefits, very small pensions and annuities until her recent death.
Scottish widows have now sent this letter claiming she was over paid by 50% for eight plus years but in their letter they say they found a copy of my dads death certificate but unfortunately they (scottish widows) failed to pass this information on internally to the relevant departments. They apologize for this mistake but what to claim back the overpayment which is almost 4000 pound from her estate.
Her estate is no more than 5000 pound and will be empty (zero) after funeral costs and outstanding nursing home fees have been paid.

Can anyone offer any advice on this issue as it was clearly an internal Scottish Widows error which led to the overpayment given they admit to locating the original death certificates provided????
Should it be paid back or should it be written off?

Be grateful for some advice

Julio

As the estate has no money you should write and tell them by signed for letter that the estate is insolvent and nobody will be administrating the estate.

Julio7

Thanks ... would they then write off that overpayment or could they persue an executor down the line?

Yorkshireman99

If the estate has no money they will write it off. Th executor is not liable.

Keep_pedalling

Julio7 wrote: »

Thanks ... would they then write off that overpayment or could they persue an executor down the line?

They will have no choice, and as you will have informed them that the estate is not being administered there will be no executor to chase.

Linton

Questions for the experts - you say that the estate will be empty once the nursing home fees are paid. Can the OP arrange payment of the nursing home fees without being the administrator? Do the nursing home fees take precedence over the repayment of the annuity?

Keep_pedalling

Linton wrote: »

Questions for the experts - you say that the estate will be empty once the nursing home fees are paid. Can the OP arrange payment of the nursing home fees without being the administrator? Do the nursing home fees take precedence over the repayment of the annuity?

Very good question. If they did pay the care costs they would have administered the estate, but without the need to go through probate the pension company would have no evidence to prove that (unless the OP told them about the care home debt)

If it's not too late they could simple write to both care home and the pension company informing them of insolvency and let them sort it out between themselves. The funeral can be payed directly by the bank.

Julio7

Thanks for that question ... its a very true situation and shall be noted.

securityguy

Even were the estate solvent, I suspect that Scottish Widows would struggle to recover all of the over-payment anyway. Anything paid out more than six years ago is probably statute barred, and subsequent to that if it can be shown that the recipient took the money in good faith believing the payments to be correct then similarly there is no right to recover.

If the estate's insolvent, then that's an end of it, of course.