Proving source of funds - inheritance

Snuggles

We are hoping to move in the next 12-18 months. The deposit for our purchase will be made up of equity in our current property plus £20k which is left over from an inheritance I received five years ago.

Having read about other people having issues, and given the time which has passed since I received the inheritance, I have been thinking about whether I should take action now to obtain whatever I will need to prove the source of the £20k.

Does anyone know whether it is likely to be enough to show a copy of the will and the estate accounts which details the inheritance and when it was paid? Or am I likely to also need to have bank statements showing the money going into my account five years ago? Will even that be enough, or would I be expected to also provide ongoing statements or summaries for the last five years to show the money was still there all this time?

It's a bit complicated because in that time, the money has been moved around different accounts (to try to maximise interest), and at one point my OH "borrowed" from this pot of money to buy a car and then repaid what he "borrowed" month by month until it was fully repaid. So it's not a nice and neat case of receiving the money five years ago and being able to show that it's been sitting in the same account untouched all that time.

I don't know if I'm over thinking this but I'm concerned that after the six year mark it might be harder to obtain past bank statements etc, which is why I'm thinking about it now.

Any advice would be appreciated.

davidmcn

Nobody's likely to be looking back five plus years, they may well not even go back as far as five months.

Snuggles

davidmcn wrote: »

Nobody's likely to be looking back five plus years, they may well not even go back as far as five months.

But surely they will still want to know where the money came from? I'm talking about showing proof of the source of the funds, not just proof that we have the money.

theartfullodger

Simply tell the the truth (as you outlined above) and provide such documentation as they require.


Different lenders require different info/documents.

Snuggles

theartfullodger wrote: »

Simply tell the the truth (as you outlined above) and provide such documentation as they require.

Well yes, I wan't planning on lying about it! I was trying to get a handle on what documents they might require and whether I should try to get them now, given the time that has already passed.

theartfullodger wrote: »

Different lenders require different info/documents.

Ok, thanks.

davidmcn

Snuggles wrote: »

But surely they will still want to know where the money came from? I'm talking about showing proof of the source of the funds, not just proof that we have the money.

They need to draw the line somewhere. Otherwise they'd also want evidence of where the deceased got their money, and so on until the invention of money. In practice if the money was in your account a few months ago it's assumed to be your money, what they're checking for are recent transfers to you.

ec9wrr

I was in a similar and believe me no one seems to really care. As long as you can show it in an account with your name that’s fine. They seemed most bothered about the statement being recent rather than showing it over the years. I wouldn’t worry.

Boozle

Part of our cash buy of our house is from money my husband's father gifted him. We had to show full bank statements going back 6 months, but that was all as the money has been in our account for 3 years. They didn't want any further information. The rest was from my mother's estate this year, and for that I had to show the letter of probate, memorandum of sale from her property and my bank statement showing the money deposited from the buyer.

PasturesNew

Over-thinking.

It's not a large amount and you can show its existence at many points, so it's "been yours a long time" and not "fairly short-term, possibly a loan obtained or possibly some laundering".

What they're looking for is more where people've suddenly got a large amount, where that amount suddenly appears without a good reason.

pinkteapot

It's not a large amount - just say it's from your savings and show them a statement of the savings account(s) it's sat in. They're unlikely to ask anything else.

If it were £1m and you earn £15k they might dig deeper into it.