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Excessive executor fee from bank appointed by deceased
Comments
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IANAL.
The residual legatee is the one actually paying this fee. Did the bank get them to agree their charges in advance, as I've seen this done before. Not sure if they are bound to do this though.
Yes, the expenses would be paid from the residual estate - but ONLY if there were nothing else stated in the will.
Chances are that the bank helped write the will and had their expenses coming out of the estate first. Where a will is properly written, this is common - otherwise it's not clear who meets the expenses and one then needs to apply the terms of the Admininstration of Estates Act.Warning ..... I'm a peri-menopausal axe-wielding maniac0 -
Hi,
Thanks very much for all the information & comments.
Looks like we will have to put it down to experience...
For your interest this is an idea of what the work & charges were.
The liquid assets were all maintained by the bank already for the past 8 years. so there was very little to do, we knew because we were doing it in parallel with the bank.
There were 4 properties that needed valuations obtaining which were done by specialists & their bills added to the costs....
The bank wrote a few cheques to pay the paper bill & stuff like that.. Charge for their services was £32,310.02 plus VAT (taken out of the estate after inheritance tax is paid)...
BEWARE0 -
This is quite normal for banks - you should really never, never appoint a bank as executor. The charges are standard and published - I doubt if a challenge would succeed. They were appointed by the deceased, and who presumably included a clause in the will allowing them to charge said fees.
They are being paid by the person who appointed them - the deceased - ie the estate, the executor(s), not by the residuary legatees. Yes I know in practical terms it comes out of their pockets, but that's not the point.
It is highly unlikely they would stand down if asked - they have been legally appointed and see no good reason why they should lose their fee.
Never never appoint a bank as executor.0 -
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To put it in some context IMO the gross value of the estate would have been at least £1.3million!!
Be that as it may, given the circumstances described, the bank would have had to do little more work for an estate of value £1.3m than of value £130,000.
Sure, someone signed up to the deal, but nonetheless that's a year's salary for someone to do what the OP described as a relatively simple job (in this context).
Just because it's a small %age doesn't mean it's a trivial sum as we see here, nor value for money, which is what I suggest irks the OP most.0 -
I didn't suggest that it was.
But an estate of that size is never simple to administer whatever the OP says.0
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