Selling (or keeping) shares

Mistermeaner

Hi

My mum passed away recently. I've managed probate and helped my surviving father with the estate. We have grant of probate and most things are sorted now.

I found various references to shares with the 'commonwealth bank of australia' in paperwork. My dad assured me these were old holdings and they had been sold some time ago.

Low and behold ~£1000 of dividends landed a few weeks ago.

We have now received in the post 2 statements; 1 in my dads name and 1 in my mums name.

They are issued by the Commonwelath bank of australia, Sydney.

They are listed as 'ordinary shares' and have paid 200cents per share. 536 in dads name, 488 in mums name. The payments were converted into GBP and paid into my dads account

Clearly I need to inform these guys of mums death and I guess as minimum transfer her shares to my dad

I can contact them direct with the details on the statement but was wondering if there is anything else I need to do regards the fact that these appear to be held directly and producing foreign income

I'm inclined to arrange for their sale but don't know how I would go about doing this? Do I need to open a trading account in the UK and move these shares into that account and sell or can I just find a broker?

The shares appear to be held on the australian stock exchange (ASX) with code CBA - they are worth (today) 73.29 ozzy dollars each so 75K ozzy $. In real money that is £40K+ so a decent holding.

My dad has no idea how he and mum ended up holding these shares!

I'm inclined to sell just to keep things tidy and simple for him (plus the yield on the dividend was only 2.5%). dad has substantial savings, 2 DB pensions + my mum residual DB pension + full state pension and no debts etc. so is fine financially

A minor point I guess but these weren't declared on probate application at all.... they won;t tip the balance on inheritance tax or anything but should I inform the probate court or do we just keep this one quiet :cool: ?


Thanks

LobsterMemory

If the holding doesn't affect the inheritance tax position then HMRC don't want/need to know

For the rest, suggest you look at the registrar's website and see if they have a FAQ on what to do on the death of a shareholder.

Patrol

Mistermeaner wrote: »

Hi
My dad has no idea how he and mum ended up holding these shares!
Thanks

My dad has some of these shares. They originated from an endowment policy with (I think) Colonial Mutual who demutualised and issued shares, and were then taken over by Commonwealth Bank of Australia. May be the same for your parents.