Bought neighbours car and they died before cashing the cheque

doodling

Hi,

In theory you can insist on probate to confirm the identity of the executor before making the payment.  If you have any doubts as to whether the person making the request is actually the executor then that is what you should do (no one else will protect you if this is some kind of fraud).

If on the other hand you are confident that the person you are talking to is the executor but you just don't like it then you should pay them without delay - as others have said, they are probably trying to assemble the cash to pay a hefty IHT bill.

Spendless

To me it's not the bank account as such that's an issue, as others have explained that is quite common.

It's that you don't know if said person is really the executor (adding in you know the deceased was trying to remove them and presumably aren't completely sure if that happened or not?)

If the cheque had been cashed in time then it wouldn't be your problem what happens next. As it is you don't want to hand over money to someone if they're not who they claim to be.

Difficult one. Do you have contact details of the beneficiary to get in touch and confirm this?  Any correspondence I'd acknowledge you owe a debt to the estate to cover yourself but you feel you need to know more that someone is who they say before making a large deposit into a bank account.  

castle96

Never trust anyone !

Eldi_Dos

Curious about this, who does the car actually belong to if no money has changed hands and would this have any bearing on insurance.

Marcon

Eldi_Dos said:

Curious about this, who does the car actually belong to if no money has changed hands and would this have any bearing on insurance.

The car belongs to the purchaser, and has done since the point of sale. The fact that the cheque wasn't cashed before the seller died has no bearing on the matter.