Excepted Estate - utter confusion!

polar_pig

They only really need to see an original death certificate to freeze the accounts. You need the balances to fill in the probate forms. With ID and also a copy of the will from one of you they should give bank balances. 

jessthecat_2

Ah that's good, thanks. Is this something I could do in branch? It would be much easier to spend half a day traipsing around the town centre than posting off lots of death certificates!

polar_pig

You can certainly go into the branch. Not sure if you can freeze the accounts over the phone without a death certificate, but in any case they'll want to see it at some point.

Keep_pedalling

jessthecat_2 said:

Ah that's good, thanks. Is this something I could do in branch? It would be much easier to spend half a day traipsing around the town centre than posting off lots of death certificates!

Don’t just turn up in branch, try to make an appointment as you need to see someone who is familiar with dealing with bereavements. This is what I did with my mother’s accounts with Barclays and it was all sorted within 24 hours. This was pre-lockdown however so things may be more difficult now.

Newly_retired

I was able to submit scanned death certificates online.

RAS

It depends where the accounts are held, as ideally you go into that branch. If that is not possible and you want to take the documentation into a branch nearer you, it would be wise to find out the sort code for the branch you want to attend, based on my experience, admittingly per Covid.

Otherwise you go round and round the call centres who can't connect you to the bereavement team in your chosen branch because they don't know how to connect without the sort code.

So have a good chat to the bereavement team when you first get in touch to find out their protocol. 

I ended up sitting in the branch until someone was prepared to give me the information required to book an appointment. It was so long she decided just to scan the documents there and then.

poppystar

I found it scarily easy to freeze accounts - no death cert or anything at that stage. As my father’s wallet was somewhere ‘safe’ in a large hospital I phoned the bank’s bereavement department immediately to put a stop on his cards and they froze all accounts there and then - all accounts in the banking group not just the accounts with cards. I didn’t get the figures at that stage but knew them from the paperwork in the house. 

jessthecat_2

I'm still ploughing through these forms!
On IHT403, do I need to include all small cash gifts my sis & I received in the last 7 years, or is there a xmas/birthday allowance such that some can be disregarded?
Thanks  

tetrarch

jessthecat_2 said:

Ah that's good, thanks. Is this something I could do in branch? It would be much easier to spend half a day traipsing around the town centre than posting off lots of death certificates!

Depending on the institutions involved I would not recommend this approach. My experience was that the branch staff (with the exception of Santander) were useless. Didn't know what to do, didn't do it properly and said things that were incorrect.

My advice would be to phone or go online to notify the death first. You are then dealing with the "Bereavement Team" and they do know what they are doing much better than the branch staff. This is only my experience, but others on here have had similar troubles.

Regards

Tet

Keep_pedalling

jessthecat_2 said:

I'm still ploughing through these forms!
On IHT403, do I need to include all small cash gifts my sis & I received in the last 7 years, or is there a xmas/birthday allowance such that some can be disregarded?
Thanks  

You can safely disregard those.