Dad died leaving no will

grosy

My father died last week and I think I now have a flavour of his estate.

His home owned as joint tenants with unmarried partner rough value £275K
Holiday cottage owned by himself surveyor value £240K
Bank accounts around a couple of thousand.

He had 3 children.
My understanding is the partner gets the home, but half the value of the home and contents counts towards IHT. Is that correct?
His children get the cottage but will have an IHT bill of around £20k Is that correct?

Please confirm if I understand it correctly.

Thanks

Yorkshireman99

grosy wrote: »

My father died last week and I think I now have a flavour of his estate.

His home owned as joint tenants with unmarried partner rough value £275K
Holiday cottage owned by himself surveyor value £240K
Bank accounts around a couple of thousand.

He had 3 children.
My understanding is the partner gets the home, but half the value of the home and contents counts towards IHT. Is that correct?
His children get the cottage but will have an IHT bill of around £20k Is that correct?

Please confirm if I understand it correctly.

Thanks

The rules on who gets what are here.

https://www.gov.uk/inherits-someone-dies-without-will

The IHT is paid out of the estate not by the benficiaries..One of the children will need to apply for letters of administration to deal with the estate. Because the estate value is close to the IHT limit HMR&C may query the hosue value so a professional valuation may be needed for that. The contents value may not be much as far as value for probate unles there are any expensive item.

Keep_pedalling

Yorkshireman99 wrote: »

The rules on who gets what are here.

https://www.gov.uk/inherits-someone-dies-without-will

The IHT is paid out of the estate not by the benficiaries..One of the children will need to apply for letters of administration to deal with the estate. Because the estate value is close to the IHT limit HMR&C may query the hosue value so a professional valuation may be needed for that. The contents value may not be much as far as value for probate unles there are any expensive item.

Although they will have to pay it if they want to keep the cottage.

Was he ever widowed in the past? If so he probably has some transferable nil rate band that would wipe out any IHT liability..

grosy

Thanks for the replies.
He was divorced from our mum, the cottage will probably have to be sold, but as yet undecided.

As they were joint tenants of there home, I am right in thinking that I need to get it valued and use half the value against the iht tax threshold.

Keep_pedalling

grosy wrote: »

Thanks for the replies.
He was divorced from our mum, the cottage will probably have to be sold, but as yet undecided.

As they were joint tenants of there home, I am right in thinking that I need to get it valued and use half the value against the iht tax threshold.

You will need a professional valuation on his main residence.

Once this is all sorted make sure you have your own will and IHT planing in place. In hindsight it would have been very easy to avoid this tax bill with a little bit of forward planning and a well drafted will.