Mum died, father has advanced dementia, no power of attorney!

LaydeeLisa

Hi all, I feel this may be a simple question but we are going around in circles.  I would like to know if we can get a couple of life insurances paid into a new 'executor' account to cover funeral expenses and sundries while we wait for the Court of Protection to assign deputyship, or if we just have to pay out of our own account and wait to be reimbursed.
In short, father has advanced dementia, and mother was carer, but she died very suddenly a couple of weeks ago.  My husband is executor and we are facing costs of circa £5k to pay for the funeral and short term costs.  As there is no LPOA we are applying to the Court of Protection (there is a joint bank account and a property to sell to cover care costs etc eventually) but this will take months to come through.  Mother had a couple of life insurance policies that will pay out more than the £5k, so we were hoping to open a new bank account, use it for the funeral costs, and leave it inactive until such a time as we need to put property sale money in, pay for care home etc, and possibly eventually as the final executor/estate account.   We absolutely want to do the right thing and keep everything as simple as possible, any suggestions/direction/guidance welcome, thank you.  

Robin9

Is the Joint Bank a/c still open - is there enough there to pay the funeral director (all you have to do is present the bill to the bank) -- and also pay life assurances into the same account ?

LaydeeLisa

Hi Robin, the joint account is still open but the bank have said that until we have Deputyship we cannot have access to it, as Father is still alive.

Savvy_Sue

No, you can't have access to it, but ask if they (the bank) will settle the funeral bill from it on sight of the FD's bill. 

I don't think it will help with any other payments, but again, worth asking. 

Will they allow the insurances to be paid into it? 

LaydeeLisa

Savvy_Sue said:

No, you can't have access to it, but ask if they (the bank) will settle the funeral bill from it on sight of the FD's bill. 

I don't think it will help with any other payments, but again, worth asking. 

Will they allow the insurances to be paid into it? 

I did ask and they said we could not use it for funeral costs, although this was ok when my own Dad died (these are in-laws to me, but I didn't bother to put that in my original post).  Maybe when we call the bank again today we will ask again.  It does seem mad to expect people to cough up thousands when there is a bank account sitting there.  

LaydeeLisa

I should add that we already paid £1,800 deposit to the FD's - they didn't even ask if the estate/bank was paying, just asked us for the money.  Bit miffed now I think about it as we probably can't get that back for months, even if the in-laws bank do agree to pay the remaining invoice!  Not a massive problem financially, but...you know!  As you will all know you just go into auto-mode when someone passes, and we had so much to do with Father to get him care that we just followed the experts.  I wish I had been thinking slightly more clearly at the time.  Anyway - thanks for advice so far, we will call the in-laws bank again today and see if we get a different answer.  That may well give us the info on whether to pay the insurances into a new account and recoup all costs from there or just pay into their joint account and wait for a few months to recoup what we paid already.

Robin9

Are you talking to the Bank's Bereavement section ?

LaydeeLisa

Robin9 said:

Are you talking to the Bank's Bereavement section ?

Yes, but I am starting to think we may have been given the wrong info.  Will call again today and ask some very specific questions.  I thought we had, but worth asking again!

xylophone

With regard to the insurance policies, these are very often paid outside the estate and to a named beneficiary. Who was the named beneficiary? 
If paid to the estate (exor of Mary Jones dec'd), then you will need an exor account which you will be able to open once you have probate for your mother.
All that said, I am very surprised that the Bank is refusing to allow  payment of funeral expenses  from the joint account - I would query this again.

LaydeeLisa

xylophone said:

With regard to the insurance policies, these are very often paid outside the estate and to a named beneficiary. Who was the named beneficiary? 
If paid to the estate (exor of Mary Jones dec'd), then you will need an exor account which you will be able to open once you have probate for your mother.
All that said, I am very surprised that the Bank is refusing to allow  payment of funeral expenses  from the joint account - I would query this again.

Thanks re the bank, we definitely will.  I'm quite annoyed that they told me differently tbh!  The issue is that Father is the beneficiary of Mother's estate, but if the money is paid into the joint account we were told we could not pay funeral ex's with it- which seems incorrect now.  Looks like we may just have to wait for anything we already paid, but in theory could get the rest of the costs paid direct from the bank.  

Mojisola

LaydeeLisa said:

The issue is that Father is the beneficiary of Mother's estate, but if the money is paid into the joint account we were told we could not pay funeral ex's with it- which seems incorrect now. 

I don't think this is incorrect.  While the money is in the deceased's account, funeral expenses can be paid directly from that account.

Once the money has been transferred into someone else's account, only the account holder can authorise payments.