Probate toe-curling story of delay

Brie

best of luck with all your hard work.  isn't there a website to check on probate?  might just be a yes/no type thing but at least then you'd know.

ElmoR

Brie said:

best of luck with all your hard work.  isn't there a website to check on probate?  might just be a yes/no type thing but at least then you'd know.

Yes, I check it every working day

p00hsticks

ElmoR said:

The B&B for the first night is near a town household waste centre, we pick all the exotic destinations! It'll be handy for dropping off the rest of the WEE type items including a prototype betamax video which must have concrete inside because it weighs a tonne.

Just make sure in advance that you'll be allowed in. When we had to do a similar clearance we found out that (apparently to prevent people from the neighbouring county who lived nearby from using it) you had to show that you lived in the correct catchment area to get access to the waste centre, and so we had to ask some friendly locals to take stuff for us....

BooJewels

I realise that your mind is perhaps now made up and arrangements in place, but I'm another advocate of getting pros in to clear a place.  I've done 2 recently and my only regret is that on the first one, that I didn't call them in sooner.

My sister and I gave ourselves bruises,  pulled muscles, broken nails and stubbed toes trying to pull apart old furniture and manhandle it round a double winder staircase - and did fill 2 skips and made over 20 tip runs before we called it quits.  That was a big task and was only £100 more than your skip hire - but there was enough stuff still in there for them to sell to reduce the fee.  Second one was last week, with very little saleable but a smaller task and I just got his bill for £525 for a garage and 3 bed house.  It was worth every penny not to have to do it.

JGB1955

BooJewels said:

I realise that your mind is perhaps now made up and arrangements in place, but I'm another advocate of getting pros in to clear a place.  I've done 2 recently and my only regret is that on the first one, that I didn't call them in sooner.

My sister and I gave ourselves bruises,  pulled muscles, broken nails and stubbed toes trying to pull apart old furniture and manhandle it round a double winder staircase - and did fill 2 skips and made over 20 tip runs before we called it quits.  That was a big task and was only £100 more than your skip hire - but there was enough stuff still in there for them to sell to reduce the fee.  Second one was last week, with very little saleable but a smaller task and I just got his bill for £525 for a garage and 3 bed house.  It was worth every penny not to have to do it.

I agree totally.  I live 120 miles away from the house that needed to be cleared.  My brother and I had both 'taken' anything of sentimental value away already.  It was during lockdown.  We had a couple of days notice of simultaneous exchange and completion.  The £750 I paid the house clearance people was the best money I've spent in a long time.  Don't underestimate the mental toll of clearing out a family home - walking away and leaving the problem to the professionals was the best answer.

Linton

Various charities will completely clear a house, keeping the things they can sell,  for a very reasonable charge.  British Heart Foundation cleared my father's house a few years ago for around £250.  Despite it being a large house with lots of "stuff" the work was done in a day with a remarkable amount of what I thought was useless rubbish being kept for sale.

ElmoR

Update after the dust of the house clearance has settled...

We had several charities come to the house and pick through what was available - they didn't want much, saying the big items were too dated (1960s). I've already done many, many solo trips to the local household waste centre, to the point that the staff there recognise me and say hi   It did feel good to know that much of that was being recycled in some way.

We ploughed on with the clearance ourselves. It took a Friday afternoon and a very long Saturday, buckets of sweat. Much of the large (dated/solid) furniture had to be broken down first but it all fitted in the skip better that way. It was a huge amount of work. The skip hire cost £480 for their largest size. We filled it to brimming and then had to start putting the overspill into the garage. The skip hire guy had estimated that one skip would be sufficient having been round to recce. In the end, we had to hire another skip of same size to decant out of the garage - but I think the skip hire guy took pity on us and did all that shifting for us the following week. While there, with a now empty house, we also cleaned it, hopefully making it slightly more presentable.

The upsides of doing it ourselves? Exercise (is that an upside?), final sift for treasure, seeing the clean, empty house, seeing the neighbours for chats, meeting up with an old school friend, several Gr3ggs breakfasts!

It's in the hands of an estate agent now...

Meantime, I contacted the solicitors to ask about probate status. They contacted the probate office and had a reply to say 4 to 6 weeks possible waiting time. That was 2 weeks ago now...

Meantime, meantime, I've done a fresh sweep of all the paperwork - some is completed, but there's probably another 20 or so actions once that probate is done...I thought I would start writing those letters and filling in the various forms (like selling shares) now, then add the dates once it is finally a green light...It'll be nice not to receive regular letters from companies telling me how long it's been since our Father passed away and nothing seems to have happened - do they think I'm just sitting here with all the necessary documentation, twiddling my thumbs doing nothing!?

mutter mutter...

ElmoR

ElmoR

Finally, probate Letters of Administration arrived. That took 26 weeks in addition to the months Oct, Nov, Dec, Jan and part of Feb while the solicitor processed it and  "forgot" to submit it to the probate office. I'm waiting for their bill to arrive and then I suppose I need to query it and ask for some kind of reduction. I'm not brilliant at that kind of thing.

Now I am waiting for the executor bank account to be changed to allow payments and for a gadget/cheque book to be sent in the post. Neither could be done in the branch.

Sent a flurry of letters to accounts with the Letters document...fingers crossed I filled in all their forms correctly. It would be much simpler if there was one standard form for every account type.

mutter, mutter...(with a hint of optimism now)

ElmoR