Advice MIL died without leaving a will

paul2louise

Sea_Shell said:

I can't remember if this has been raised up thread, but are you sure that the SIL actually still HAS the estate funds?

This sounds like a lot of bluster and diversion to delay having to actually transfer any funds.    Has she backed herself into a financial corner, and her only option is to fight, in the hope you give up?

As far as I know the money is still in the MIL accounts, Post office and NatWest..So neither are earning much at all both sitting in limbo. But not 100% sure. Would she be in trouble if she has drawn the money and was gaining interest and not declaring it. Not sure if we can find that out although it's worth mentioning to the solicitor next time. 

paul2louise

KITTYKAT8_2 said:

Are you sure she has not withdrawn the money and used it herself, I hope not. Her behaviour raises some red flags.

No I am.not sure as we have no way of checking. Just assumed as she started this discussion springtime that she wanted it sorted. If she had taken the money I would have expected her to sit quietly..

paul2louise

Hopefully the solicitor letter will move things along. This new solicitor is so much better. OH emailed previous useless solicitor and sacked them. They replied saying sorry it had been missed and did he want a free letter doing. 🤦

Spendless

I have long suspected that the reason SIL  said she wanted to split the inheritance 7 ways (her, her 4 children,  OP's DH, and their child) was because she'd already spent some of it and only had enough left for a 2/7th handout approx. £57-58K and the rest has gone and she had no intention of giving something to her own kids, just said it thinking brother would agree - that's not worked out well for her .

Sounds like the new solicitor takes no prisoners. Good. I hope it's got to the bottom of and SIL is forced to show her hand and that your DH's inheritance is still there. 

tetrarch

Your SIL has the legal authority to transfer the residual funds into an interest-bearing account pending distribution.The reresulting interest does belong to the estate

It could be argued that failure to do this is dereliction of her duties to the estate and its beneficiaries, though there seems to be no legal requirement to do so.

Regards

Tet

Spendless

I wasn't aware that if you received interest on an account you'd put an inheritance in then it also becomes part of the estate and should be shared out accordingly as per the will.

That's actually what my Mum did with my Nan's money but she hadn't intended to put it in a savings account she wanted a current account (cos she wanted to write cheques from it!) but asked at her bank  not considering she had one there, so they put it in a savings account instead. I'm quite pleased to know Mum acted correctly if unwittingly since one of the beneficiaries is an estranged relative who therefore can't argue that Mum kept interest to herself when she didn't. There's no legal obligation to put an inheritance prior to being shared out in an account that pays interest as far as I'm aware.

paul2louise

Spendless said:

I wasn't aware that if you received interest on an account you'd put an inheritance in then it also becomes part of the estate and should be shared out accordingly as per the will.

That's actually what my Mum did with my Nan's money but she hadn't intended to put it in a savings account she wanted a current account (cos she wanted to write cheques from it!) but asked at her bank  not considering she had one there, so they put it in a savings account instead. I'm quite pleased to know Mum acted correctly if unwittingly since one of the beneficiaries is an estranged relative who therefore can't argue that Mum kept interest to herself when she didn't. There's no legal obligation to put an inheritance prior to being shared out in an account that pays interest as far as I'm aware.

Interesting. I didn't know that either. I am just presuming that MIL money is still in the existing non interest paying accounts she set up. The post office savings account had a period of interest but then dropped to a negligible amount after its period of time. The house sale was in a NatWest current account so no interest there either 

Malthusian

Spendless said:

There's no legal obligation to put an inheritance prior to being shared out in an account that pays interest as far as I'm aware.

It would have to be a very large sum of money held for a very long amount of time, and there would have to be a compelling reason not to simply use the cash to make an interim distribution. 
Otherwise, if the estate was administered by solicitors, their hourly fees for finding and setting up bank accounts would devour any interest. Bear in mind:

• best-buy savings accounts are unlikely to be available to a deceased's estate
• it has to be easy access because as soon as whatever issues are preventing distribution are cleared up, the money should be withdrawn and distributed 
• as soon as you start moving money you lose "temporary high balance" FSCS cover, which means multiple accounts will have to be set up, which means professional executors will bill even more for their time in doing so 

If the estate is being administered by lay executors, they can't bill for their time but the courts are likely to give them more leeway for not maximising interest than to a solicitor.
So the fundamental issue is that the inheritance has not been distributed (so that the OP can start earning interest in their own name), not that the executor isn't maximising interest on the money while they sit on it.
I would not be trying to make the SIL personally liable for loss of interest. If there is a dispute over a Will and you eventually get everything you were entitled to, you should throw a party, not try to run up the score and rub the opposition's nose in it.
If you get less than you were entitled to, then foregone interest is a non-issue, you aren't going to get it and you would just be inflating your loss by thinking about it.

paul2louise said:
Would she be in trouble if she has drawn the money and was gaining interest and not declaring it. Not sure if we can find that out although it's worth mentioning to the solicitor next time. 

If she has drawn the money and it is resting in her personal account earning interest then that would be great news, because it means she still has it to pay you with. Often when people illegally withdraw an estate's money into their personal account it is never seen again. (We have no idea whether she's done that, I'm talking in general terms.)
I would stick to what you are owed under the Will and not start inventing money to chase her over; you're not your SIL.

thegreenone

MiL's bank accounts should have been closed by SiL when she received the Death Certificate.  There's no way those accounts should still be open.  Where she put the money would've been up to her as executor but it should've been kept separate to her own money.

paul2louise

thegreenone said:

MiL's bank accounts should have been closed by SiL when she received the Death Certificate.  There's no way those accounts should still be open.  Where she put the money would've been up to her as executor but it should've been kept separate to her own money.

That maybe true but it hasnt happened as far as I know. The money has just sat in the two accounts opened my MIL