Probate / Administator unwell / Solicitor expensive

Good Morning,

I apologise for the long post but we are desperate for some advice here.

My mother in Laws Sister (Wife’s Aunty) died about 5 weeks ago. Her funeral was 2 days ago. Wife’s Aunty was single and died elderly in her own home her next of kin is my mother in law.

My mother in law lives a few hundred miles from the property and is in no real capacity to deal with the deceased’s effects apart from a visit to pay respects. My wife and her sister also live hundreds of miles away from the property. We have contacts in that area though which may help with the next steps.

Mother in Law is Next of Kin. There was no will in the house (we have asked local solicitors for any record)

Mother in Law who herself is elderly says it’s all too much to deal with she doesn’t feel she has the capacity to fill in forms or do any of the leg work to deal with the property.

She met with a Probate Solicitor who said he will deal with the house clearance, deep clean and getting the house sold and all the other parts of probate.

He has told her it will take a long time to sort out and his fee is £196 per hour (plus VAT)

Now the property is probably worth 300k but we have already discovered debts of 25k on credit cards.

It seems to me that there will be little left of the estate for MIL to inherit. She has not yet signed a contract with this solicitor

My wife and her sister would like to take over the arrangements if possible of arranging the house to be cleared, cleaned and marketed the biggest problem is distance however we can make trips to the property as required and we have local contacts who can hold keys for tradesman visits etc.

Our priority here is to allow MIL to inherit as much value of the property as possible so she has funds for her own care in the future.

I have suggested that my wife take over the arrangement of
administrating the estate in the interest of MIL not being ripped off.
We would need to keep this process and all decisions completely transparent to ensure all parties are aware of what’s going on.

My question is where does my wife start ? We are willing to put the leg work in on this but can she legally take over administering the estate ? If it means anything the property and MIL is in England and my Wife is in Scotland.

Apologies for this 4am post (rapped out on my phone) but we would be genuinely appreciative of any guidance

Comments

  • Flugelhorn
    Flugelhorn Posts: 5,491
    First Anniversary Name Dropper First Post
    Forumite
    edited 15 March 2019 at 8:05AM
    There is a sort of pecking order for who can take over the administration :
    If there is no valid will, and you are the next-of-kin, you can apply to be an administrator in the following order of priority:

    you are the married partner or civil partner of the person who has died
    you are the child of the person who has died
    you are the grandchild of the person who has died
    you are the parent of the person who has died
    you are the brother or sister of the person who has died
    you are the nephew or niece of the person who has died
    you are another relative of the person who has died.

    so going down the list it would look OK for your wife and her sister to get LOA - much can be done remotely but will need to do some visits, if the estate is that value then you should be able to manage it without solicitors.

    One thing to do before you start though is to check the land registry to make sure that there is no enormous equity release loan on the house that may make the estate very very small or even insolvent

    Re keeping all transparent - yes very important , lots of communication with sister, I did similar with cousin and we emailed everything so if anyone asked they could see how we came to the decisions we made, quotes we got for work etc etc

    The forms for LOA / probate look complicated but most of the time you only fill in small parts of it.
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