Executors discover evidence of negligent activity of deceased. What to do ?

Mojisola

Fly_Guy wrote: »

If solvent we CANNOT walk away and will be obliged to assume administrator roles.

Why not? ........

nom_de_plume

Fly_Guy wrote: »

Even if we renounce then the inheritance passes to our children

Surely this is incorrect. Any inheritance would still come to you.

Fly_Guy

Mojisola wrote: »

Why not? ........

The public trustee will only step in if the estate has no benefactors, which is not the case.

If we renounce any interest in aunties estate then this is treated legally as if we had died and so that 'benefit' passes on to our benefactors - our children. Because they are under 18 they cannot (yet) legally renounce their interest in the estate. Therefore we cannot remove the benefactors from the estate and so the Public Trustee will not step in.

Given that we are not willing to dump this onto our 14yo daughter, we HAVE to deal with it.

Mojisola

Fly_Guy wrote: »

The public trustee will only step in if the estate has no benefactors, which is not the case.

If we renounce any interest in aunties estate then this is treated legally as if we had died and so that 'benefit' passes on to our benefactors - our children. Because they are under 18 they cannot (yet) legally renounce their interest in the estate. Therefore we cannot remove the benefactors from the estate and so the Public Trustee will not step in.

Given that we are not willing to dump this onto our 14yo daughter, we HAVE to deal with it.

The children can't renounce their inheritance but that doesn't force anyone to deal with the estate.

Fly_Guy

Mojisola wrote: »

The children can't renounce their inheritance but that doesn't force anyone to deal with the estate.

Except that the house itself is a liability that will need to be insured to protect us should its disrepair lead to damage or injury. Not to mention other ongoing costs. As such, ignoring the estate will not make it go away and so it does, at a practical level, need to be dealt with.

Yorkshireman99

Fly_Guy wrote: »

Except that the house itself is a liability that will need to be insured to protect us should its disrepair lead to damage or injury. Not to mention other ongoing costs. As such, ignoring the estate will not make it go away and so it does, at a practical level, need to be dealt with.

There is nothing preventing you from handing the job over to a solicitor to do all the work.

Sea_Shell

It seems two issues are being muddled here... refusing to administer the estate and renouncing any inheritance.

Flugelhorn

Sea_Shell wrote: »

It seems two issues are being muddled here... refusing to administer the estate and renouncing any inheritance.

I think that is right - can anyone actually be forced to administer and estate?

getmore4less

Fairly sure you could

Decide not to administer and not intermeddle and let another interested party(eg. a creditor) do it while still retaining the right to any residue thus not involving the kids.

You should have no liability for the property till you decide you want any.

Anyway if you want to pick it up and progress you can take as long as you want.

I think you are back to post #26 the slog of going through the contents of the house then moving it somewhere more convenient to work through it.

The solicitor is going to want you to do all the leg work until they can see there is enough to pay any bill and then they will happily take over , just make sure your expenses take priority over the solicitors in case the money runs out(if you find any)

Fly_Guy

With all due respect - I think we will take the advice of an experienced professional we have engaged to work in our interests over anonymous internet forum members - no matter how well meaning.

As I mentioned in Post 51, we are currently seeking to establish who has ownership of the house and therefore determine whether the estate is solvent. If this is NOT the case then it gets handed off and our further involvement is minimal but we pay for the advice we have had so far from our own pocket.

If it IS solvent then we know the bills will get paid... but it will still be a pile of work that we cannot avoid.