Dealing with mums estate - practicalities ?

Fly_Guy

Sorry if this is a silly question, but...

My sister and I are the executors and sole beneficiaries of our mums estate. Total value approximately £800k. We are both competent to deal with the paperwork and get on well and trust each other. But there will be a lot of work to do and it’s going to take a while.

Ideally we would like to open a joint executors account ASAP in order to be able to both collect assets and pay for estate expenses. However what I see online seems to suggest that we can’t open this account until we have been awarded probate - which may take a while.

Does this mean that we need to pay expenses (eg house insurance)  and collect income (eg from EBay sales of estate items) via our personal accounts and then ‘reclaim’ these from the estate later once we have opened an estate account ? Or is there some way we can open a ‘normal’ joint current account now that we can use for the estate so as to keep our personal finances separate from our duties as executors ?

Many thanks in advance...

xylophone

My relative had to deal with a fairly substantial estate and could not open an exor account until probate was granted.

Rather than open a joint account, why doesn't one of you open another current account with your own bank (easily done on line) and use this for estate  purposes pro tem?

It would be advisable for whichever on of you this is to write to the other along the following lines

Dear Carol,

While we await probate (and being able to open an exor account in our joint names), I have opened an account with my bank (sort code/account number) which I will use exclusively for estate purposes.

Naturally I'll keep a full record of any expenditure I incur on behalf of the estate (and of any income  belonging to the estate) that I receive.

Once we have probate, we can agree how much should be transferred to the exor account and I'll close the sole account.

Yours sincerely,
Jo.

building_with_lego

Can you open a joint current account with your sister to use for all estate purposes?

Keep_pedalling

xylophone said:

My relative had to deal with a fairly substantial estate and could not open an exor account until probate was granted.

Rather than open a joint account, why doesn't one of you open another current account with your own bank (easily done on line) and use this for estate  purposes pro tem?

It would be advisable for whichever on of you this is to write to the other along the following lines

Dear Carol,

While we await probate (and being able to open an exor account in our joint names), I have opened an account with my bank (sort code/account number) which I will use exclusively for estate purposes.

Naturally I'll keep a full record of any expenditure I incur on behalf of the estate (and of any income  belonging to the estate) that I receive.

Once we have probate, we can agree how much should be transferred to the exor account and I'll close the sole account.

Yours sincerely,
Jo.

The issue with doing that is the executor opening the account could become incapacitate or die I thing a joint account would be better.

Fly_Guy

Many thanks for the above suggestions. If it’s possible / sensible for us to open a joint current account now (which certainly seems like a good idea) then what is the benefit / point of opening an executors account later ?

poppystar

Fly_Guy said:

Many thanks for the above suggestions. If it’s possible / sensible for us to open a joint current account now (which certainly seems like a good idea) then what is the benefit / point of opening an executors account later ?

While I’ve never needed an executors account I think you have to be careful that some organisations may not be willing to write a cheque payable to either of you and would write it “to the executors/estate of...” . Ditto any online transfer. And it’s a sort of circular logic as they might be willing to pay you in your name after probate by which time you might be able to open an executors account!

I think you need to also draw up some paperwork to show that this is an account for the estate just in case anything should happen to either of before all is completed. Unlikely but...

Savvy_Sue

Fly_Guy said:

Many thanks for the above suggestions. If it’s possible / sensible for us to open a joint current account now (which certainly seems like a good idea) then what is the benefit / point of opening an executors account later ?

It's likely that what you'd end up opening would be a 'normal' current account, but it would hopefully have the name 'Executors of ...' added to it. 

certainly when I most recently opened an executors' account, it was a 'normal' current account but with that identification. 

If you and your co-executors have any banks in common, you may be able to open a joint account there. It would certainly overcome the difficulties of attending the branch in person to provide ID. 

Even if you can only open a 'normal' account, there are advantages in later identifying it as 'Executors of', because you may find that you're running this account for some time. If anything happens to either of you, the account is then ring-fenced, and clearly won't form part of YOUR assets, or YOUR estate in the worst case.