When can I start clearing my mother's house?

[Deleted User]

theoretica said:

If you have told the banks that she is deceased then a fraudster should have a harder than usual time getting anything out of the accounts.  So long as you have all the policy numbers you need I think that is less of an issue than normal.

Professional clearance companies work fast through practice - they don't need to spend much time wondering how to do things or what next. Many will offset their charges by selling whatever is worth selling, work with charities for what they appreciate and recycle where that is best.

Yeah I've spoken to the banks.  Thanks for the peace of mind.

I'm based in Bristol so if anyone has recommendations on clearing and cleaning companies please let me know.

Savvy_Sue

No personal recommendations, but I believe Emmaus offer a house clearance service. 

[Deleted User]

I've just been informed that grant of probate in Bristol currently takes 1 year,  so I have plenty of time to clear the house.  Without probate I can't sell the property or access any of her finances.  Fortunately I have enough money to manage this process.

Flugelhorn

[Deleted User] said:

I've just been informed that grant of probate in Bristol currently takes 1 year,  so I have plenty of time to clear the house.  Without probate I can't sell the property or access any of her finances.  Fortunately I have enough money to manage this process.

who has said that? just curious - if you use a solicitor then it might but not if you do it yourself. Also most banks will transfer significant (20-30K? ) to the exec on sight of the death cert and will - they don't need probate

Doshwaster

[Deleted User] said:

I've just been informed that grant of probate in Bristol currently takes 1 year,  so I have plenty of time to clear the house.  Without probate I can't sell the property or access any of her finances.  Fortunately I have enough money to manage this process.

A death certificate and copy of the will should be enough for the bank to release finances. Just make sure you keep all of the estate money separate from your own bank accounts. I just used a bank account which I wasn't using. 

[Deleted User]

Flugelhorn said:

[Deleted User] said:

I've just been informed that grant of probate in Bristol currently takes 1 year,  so I have plenty of time to clear the house.  Without probate I can't sell the property or access any of her finances.  Fortunately I have enough money to manage this process.

who has said that? just curious - if you use a solicitor then it might but not if you do it yourself. Also most banks will transfer significant (20-30K? ) to the exec on sight of the death cert and will - they don't need probate

An employee at a natwest branch.  They said with the will and death certificate they can give me all the information about finances, pay the funeral invoice if there is enough money. But they would need grant of probate for me as executor before I access the funds.

Flugelhorn

[Deleted User] said:

Flugelhorn said:

[Deleted User] said:

I've just been informed that grant of probate in Bristol currently takes 1 year,  so I have plenty of time to clear the house.  Without probate I can't sell the property or access any of her finances.  Fortunately I have enough money to manage this process.

who has said that? just curious - if you use a solicitor then it might but not if you do it yourself. Also most banks will transfer significant (20-30K? ) to the exec on sight of the death cert and will - they don't need probate

An employee at a natwest branch.  They said with the will and death certificate they can give me all the information about finances, pay the funeral invoice if there is enough money. But they would need grant of probate for me as executor before I access the funds.

Suspect the employee wasn't fully aware - certainly RBS transferred  20K for me on sight of will and death cert, Nat West 12K with death cert, no will and a sketch of a family tree . I needed probate for 50K in the Nationwide ISA though. Worth trying the bereavement team on the phone - might be better answers there, you shouldn't be out of pocket as costs should come from estate 

p00hsticks

[Deleted User] said:

I've just been informed that grant of probate in Bristol currently takes 1 year,  so I have plenty of time to clear the house. 

As far as I'm aware the location (other than whether it's in England/Wales or Scotland) shouldn't make any difference, because probate applications are generally processed centrally now. How long it takes for you (and/or your solicitor if you engage one)  to gather all the information required to prepare the probate application, and then how long takes for the Probate Office to process the application, will vary significantly depending on the complexity of the estate, but if you are confident you have uncovered all the financial detains and have the house and assets value, then it won't necessarily take that long. 

For relatively straight forward estates you can apply for probate online, which they recommend if possible, and say will be processed quicker than filling in the paper form. I iniitally downloaded the paper form for reference to give me an idea of what information was required, but then actually completed the application online. Note that if you do this, the online and paper forms don't follow the same sequence of questions.  You can find the forms and guidance here

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/probate-forms

Before you submit the probate application itself, you have to complete an estate valuation for HMRC to see if there is any IHT due,  

It took me a while to get round to submitting the probate request, but when I did (having established that no IHT was due) I was told to expect a turnaround time of 6-8 weeks. In actual fact I had the paper grant back within ten days, whcih rather put me on the back foot as I'd been anticipating I had longer to get the house ready for sale.

Note that you don't actually need probate to put the house on the market, jsut to exchange and complete on the sale. I personally waited until I had the grant in my hand before marketing , because i've been on the other side of a probate sale as a purchaser and it can be very frustrating waiting for probate to come through (as evidenced from a few posts on both this board and the house buying one).

Gers

[Deleted User] said:

Flugelhorn said:

[Deleted User] said:

I've just been informed that grant of probate in Bristol currently takes 1 year,  so I have plenty of time to clear the house.  Without probate I can't sell the property or access any of her finances.  Fortunately I have enough money to manage this process.

who has said that? just curious - if you use a solicitor then it might but not if you do it yourself. Also most banks will transfer significant (20-30K? ) to the exec on sight of the death cert and will - they don't need probate

An employee at a natwest branch.  They said with the will and death certificate they can give me all the information about finances, pay the funeral invoice if there is enough money. But they would need grant of probate for me as executor before I access the funds.

Not always the case - https://www.natwest.com/life-moments/bereavement.html

I used the RBS online service (same group as NW).  I uploaded a certified copy of my DM's will (showing me as Executrix) and a death certificate and had the monies from her current account in mine within days.  It was approx £10k.

I don't know if the process was expedited because I had had POA for her account registered, but they do seem to be very efficient.

getmore4less

[Deleted User] said:

orchid2010 said:

Clearing MIL's house was a nightmare it was packed to the rafters as well as numerous sheds in the garden .  We had five skips (someone asked if they could look through the skips and he filled a van twice), took stuff to the dump and some picked up by a local charity.  We put a cooker, chest freezer and exercise bike in the garden for collection by local council and two days later they had 'disappeared'.  This was after family had taken the bits and pieces they wanted.  Something I never want to do again.

Also I think I've done something quite stupid. I've been putting lots of personal documents with policy  numbers and bank statements  in to the skip without shredding.

I would recover all those and put to one side you never know what you might need going through the process.

Paperwork is the last thing to get disposed of.

We were lucky we kept everything as we needed a document dealing with my grandfathers estate from over 20 years ago to deal with an issue with property ownership.