Executor tracing Gifts for IHT

getmore4less

In the real world what happens is the executor asks potential beneficiaries of gifts if they have had any.

As there is a significant trade off between the costs(time) of analysing 7 years of data and the likelihood of finding all the gifts is low(many won't be in the records) a more pragmatic approach is taken by the professionals.

they will look for the big discrepancies in asset/cashflow and see if any look like gifts if they suspect there have been some, how in depth it goes will be on a case by case basis.

Yorkshireman99

getmore4less wrote: »

In the real world what happens is the executor asks potential beneficiaries of gifts if they have had any.

As there is a significant trade off between the costs(time) of analysing 7 years of data and the likelihood of finding all the gifts is low(many won't be in the records) a more pragmatic approach is taken by the professionals.

they will look for the big discrepancies in asset/cashflow and see if any look like gifts if they suspect there have been some, how in depth it goes will be on a case by case basis.

All very well if there is evidence that this is what the professionals actually do. What is the evidence for this? Or are you just guessing? In any case it does not seem to be something that a lay executor would want to undertake.