Probate & Wills

alanjw

About 18 years ago my aunt, passed  away. My brother who was partially caring for her, took charge of the funeral arrangements etc. My self and my brother have never been on good terms, but I assumed that he had left a small amount of money to him.
Looking through the Government Probate records when she died, there is no reference to her name. Any idea's how to find out what happened to her estate, without contacting my brother?

PennyForThem_2

You could look here for a will:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/find-a-will-or-probate-document-form-pa1s

RAS

Probate is only necessary if there is a property which changes ownership, or if any of the banks/building societies require it to release funds.

Although values would have been lower 18 years ago, it is quite possible that none of your aunt's accounts held enough to justify probate and the funeral director's were paid from her largest account.

p00hsticks

PennyForThem_2 said:

You could look here for a will:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/find-a-will-or-probate-document-form-pa1s

I presume that that is what the OP has already done when they say that 'Looking through the Government Probate records when she died, there is no reference to her name..'  (as an aside, you can now do an immediate search online here https://www.gov.uk/search-will-probate - no form filling required)

Not all estates require probate - if the aunt didn't own property and the savings were low enough for the banks to release the money without requesting probate then there wouldn't have been a record. However, when claiming any money the bank would/should have asked the brother to confirm that they were legally entitled to the money or had the authority to administer the estate - but 18 years after the event they wouldn''t still have those details even if you knew which banks to approach; and even if they did the probably wouldn't be prepared to share them with you.

Unfortunately if there was no need for probate the only one who can tell you what happened to the estate is the person who dealt with at the time.

Robin9

This was 18 years ago - has something happened that has resulted in you wanting to stir things up. ?   In my opinion let sleeping dogs lie.

p00hsticks

alanjw said:

I assumed that he had left a small amount of money to him.

Op - can you please clarify what you mean here - who is 'he' and 'him' ?

Did you mean to say 'she' (the aunt) and is 'him' your brother ?