Selling shares

guinness1957

hi, need a bit of help please.

My partners father passed away in Feb and has quite a few shares with various companies. Can someone give us a few pointers as to how to sell them please.

She is/has “power of attorney” and now has “Grant of Probate”

Can she just contact the companies to sell the shares or does she need a broker

 Many thanks in advance

Thrugelmir

Will need to use stock broker. 

[Deleted User]

Hi,

welcome and sorry for your loss.

You could contact the registrars of each company and sell through them, though they tend to be expensive.

Are the shares in paper form/certificate or in a nominee account?

It's cheaper to sell through an execution only site such as THIS, have a read through the Q&As for more info.

Edit: Have a read of THIS.

IanManc

guinness1957 said:

hi, need a bit of help please.

My partners father passed away in Feb and has quite a few shares with various companies. Can someone give us a few pointers as to how to sell them please.

She is/has “power of attorney” and now has “Grant of Probate”

Can she just contact the companies to sell the shares or does she need a broker

 Many thanks in advance

The Grant of Power of Attorney ends on the death of the donor, so it ceased to exist when your partner's father passed away. In short, you can forget about it now.

If your partner has "Grant of Probate" it means that there is a will and that she is an executor. Are there any other executors or is she the only one?

The executor(s) has the right to deal with all the assets of the estate, in accordance with the will.

Does the will say what is to happen to the shares? Do they all go to your partner or are the shares divided between a number of beneficiaries?

As the Grant of Probate has been made then either there is on inheritance tax on the estate or it has already been paid. So the beneficiary(ies), in absence of any instruction in the will to sell the shares and distribute the proceeds, needs to decide whether to keep or sell the shares. Different beneficiaries can decide to do different things - they don't all need to make the same choice.

If the shares are held in certificated form them they can be transferred to the beneficiary using a Stock Transfer Form which you can download from the internet. The transfer is done by each company's Registrar, and new certificates are issued in the beneficiary's name. You can find who the registrar is on the share certificate, and you can check online to see if it is still the same registrar now, which is worth doing if the certificates are old. Occasionally companies change registrar. The Form comes with instructions, and on inheritance there is no stamp duty to pay on the transfer.

If the shares are in a nominee account then the executor can instruct that the shares are sold, or if they're to be kept then they can be transferred into new accounts in the names of each beneficiary with the investment platform where they're currently held. The investment platform will have a procedure for this, and they'll explain it to you.

There is no Capital Gains Tax to pay on the sale of shares that are inherited, because their base value is their value at the date of the death. Of course they might have gained in value since the death, but each beneficiary has an annual personal CGT allowance of £12300, so there would have to be a lot of shares and they'd have had to go up a lot for the gain to be over the allowance in the time between February and now.

guinness1957

Thanks for your reply Ianmanc, 

just to clarify, yes there is a will and my partner is the executor, according to the will the total of the estate is to be divided to those mentioned in the will in percentages. Everything apart from the shares are or have been dealt with. So, it’s just the shares and how to go about selling them without it costing an arm and a leg if get my meaning.

Thrugelmir

Are all the stocks listed on the London Stock Exchange? 

p00hsticks

Thrugelmir said:

Will need to use stock broker. 

If the shares are in paper certificate form, some registrars will offer a special service to sell the shares of a deceased holder - I know computershare do. My experience with them was that I initially needed to let the registrar know that the holder was deceased by providing a death certificate - they will then hang on to any dividends that would otherwise be paid out into a frozen bank account. Once we'd obtained probate we got in touch again and sent the certificate off and they sold the shares for us and deposited the proceeds and the outstanding dividend payments into th executors account.

Thrugelmir

p00hsticks said:

Thrugelmir said:

Will need to use stock broker. 

If the shares are in paper certificate form, some registrars will offer a special service to sell the shares of a deceased holder - I know computershare do. My experience with them was that I initially needed to let the registrar know that the holder was deceased by providing a death certificate - they will then hang on to any dividends that would otherwise be paid out into a frozen bank account. Once we'd obtained probate we got in touch again and sent the certificate off and they sold the shares for us and deposited the proceeds and the outstanding dividend payments into th executors account.

Registrars are rarely cheap to use. Though the most efficient way of disposing of the shares.