First time going through probate - please help

heavenstobetsy

Hello all

My mum has recently inherited the estate from her aunt, who she had been caring for. According to the will, she inherits the estate (essentially a house, quite run down), minus some cash legacies to other people, the solicitor fees and the funeral costs. The total cost to pay out is around £50k. Probate has just been granted.

My mum doesn't own her own home and doesn't have savings, so we are currently trying to pursue avenues in order to raise the money to allow her to keep the house, which she loves. So the first of my questions is, can we take out a mortgage on the house in order to pay the estate, plus some extra to make renovations? Or are we expected to raise the cash before we officially acquire the property? Also, how long are people usually given to settle the account? I don't want her to lose the house because we took too long to raise the money.

The second issue is that I don't entirely trust that the solicitor is putting all the legwork in. This isn't an unwarranted suspicion - they are a small town solicitor and I know of at least one other case where they bungled another person's estate (in that case the deceased owned and rented out several properties, and they mishandled it to the point where the properties were lost due to the fact that they lost all of the tenants - it's a long story). Now, my mum found a letter among my aunt's belongings referring to an Aviva insurance policy that was kept in the solicitor's vaults. Up until this point, the solicitor had mentioned several (annulled) insurance policies but not this one; they are no claiming that they have looked into the policy and so far have not found anything. So my second lot of questions are:

Is it within my rights to ask for a copy of the insurance policy they have in their vault (so that I can ensure that a) they haven't lost the policy and b) so that I can follow up independently if necessary)

Would it be a good idea to ask for an itemised bill at this stage? So far they have given us an itemised bill for the estate costs, but haven't itemised their own services, they have just given us a total for that.

Any advice would be very welcome!

Cakeguts

You are going to have a problem if you don't start looking at this in the correct way. Your mum has inherited part of an estate along with other people. So your mum and other people have inherited the estate. The other people have inherited different amounts of the estate. So what happens in this situation normally is that all the assests of the estate are sold so that all of the beneficiaries get what they are entitled to.

What the solicitors will want to do is to sell the house and its contents to pay everyone out of the proceeds. Your mum is not entitled to deprive the other beneficiaries of their inheritance by trying to keep something from the estate that means that others will have to wait for their inheritance. If there is enough spare cash in the estate to meet the £50,000 in fees and other bequests then the solicitors will do that. If they need to sell the house to get the money then they need to get on and do that.

Owain_Moneysaver

heavenstobetsy wrote: »

My mum has recently inherited the estate from her aunt, who she had been caring for. According to the will, she inherits the estate (essentially a house, quite run down), minus some cash legacies to other people, the solicitor fees and the funeral costs. The total cost to pay out is around £50k.

How is the will worded? Is your mother the residuary legatee?

Once funeral costs and executor's fees (I assume the solicitor is the executor) have been deducted, if the house is the first bequest that passes to your mother.

If there is then insufficient money in the estate to pay other bequests, they lapse.

On the other hand if your mother is residuary legatee then she will have to wait until all other bequests have been paid, by selling the house if necessary, before inheriting the house.

Your mother cannot take out a mortgage on the house to pay the estate before inheriting the house, as she doesn't own it. She might, however, be able to buy it from the estate (as a normal probate sale) and get a mortgage, but she will still need to have cash available for the deposit, legal fees etc.

heavenstobetsy

I'm not trying to deprive other people of their inheritance; as I said, I'm trying to pursue different avenues to draw up enough money, but I'm not sure what is considered a reasonable amount of time to raise funds; as I mentioned, this is the first time any of us have been through probate or inherited anything, so we don't know what timescale is considered reasonable.

She is the inheritor of the residual estate, so from what you are saying she will only inherit the house once the rest of the estate has been settled, so that answers that question. Thanks Owain for the clarification.

Cakeguts

heavenstobetsy wrote: »

I'm not trying to deprive other people of their inheritance; as I said, I'm trying to pursue different avenues to draw up enough money, but I'm not sure what is considered a reasonable amount of time to raise funds; as I mentioned, this is the first time any of us have been through probate or inherited anything, so we don't know what timescale is considered reasonable.

She is the inheritor of the residual estate, so from what you are saying she will only inherit the house once the rest of the estate has been settled, so that answers that question. Thanks Owain for the clarification.

She will only inherit the house if there is enough money in the estate to pay that £50,000 without selling the house. If there isn't £50,000 without the money from the house then the house will have to be sold. The fact that the house needs to be sold may be what the solicitors are telling you.

heavenstobetsy

Given the advice that I have received on this and the other forum, I will write to the solicitor to advise that we are providing the funds to cover the other costs so that we can secure the house, and to ask whether they can give us an indication of what timescale is reasonable for settling the account.


Having reread the last letter, it appears that they have also applied for the Grant of Probate, so it has not yet been granted. This makes me realise that the last letter they sent us was more of an advice letter; hopefully they will send us a breakdown of solicitors' fees once probate has been granted.

So I suppose the only area left that I have doubt on is the Aviva policy. It might be that they are having trouble getting the details from Aviva. My main concern is that they sent us a previous letter detailing the insurance policies they had, and Aviva wasn't listed. My mum had to dra attention to it. I would have thought that if they were doing due diligence they would have a record of an insurance policy that's in their own vault, so I just want to make sure they haven't lost it!

Owain_Moneysaver

Customarily the executor has a year from date of death to settle the estate before the beneficiaries can start complaining about delays, however while the house is in the estate the estate has to pay for insurance, utilities, any caretaking and maintenance required, etc and so the executors will usually be looking to get the house sold reasonably quickly if it has to be sold.

Solicitors on the other hand may be more relaxed about letting things take their time ... the longer it takes the more they get paid. If the unoccupied property has to be inspected every 7 days to meet the insurance requirement and the solicitor is doing it, that'll probably be an hour on the bill every week for a clerk to walk round the house for two minutes.

Your mum could try contacting Aviva and asking if there's a policy held by her aunt who has recently died, but if your aunt isn't named as executor they may not be willing to disclose any information. On the other hand it's possible that the policy has a named beneficiary (your mum?) and so funds might be released direct without going through the executor.