Gifts Inheritance & payment to beneficiaries

badmemory

Perhaps a few thoughts here & maybe a step back for a while.  What is your sisters attitude to alcohol.  I know my sister would do my shopping on line for me if I needed it, but I also know she would not order me any alcohol or certain over the counter medications.  You see what I mean?

Do you want your brother to stop taking care of your parents?  Maybe it would be better to actually get someone in to do that.  There are companies whose job it is to do that.  That way there would be no financial implications.

Tuftywufty

badmemory said:

Perhaps a few thoughts here & maybe a step back for a while.  What is your sisters attitude to alcohol.  I know my sister would do my shopping on line for me if I needed it, but I also know she would not order me any alcohol or certain over the counter medications.  You see what I mean?

Do you want your brother to stop taking care of your parents?  Maybe it would be better to actually get someone in to do that.  There are companies whose job it is to do that.  That way there would be no financial implications.

Sister only orders frozen ready meals online that they have daily. They are desigend for the elderly & not from supermarket so they don't sell alcohol.  Carers do a sandwich tea for them.
We have suggested that carers can do all the required tasks & are already paid to do them 4x a day & paid to manage both mum & dad (all apart from the ad hoc shopping & medical appointments) but Bro doesn't want that. He wants to be involved & sometimes causes friction with father as father doesn't always appreciate what he calls ' the interference'. From our perspective his input is mainly that he can provide a watching brief locally that me & my sister can't do, which is actually v useful.

Savvy_Sue

Tuftywufty said:

We have discussed with brother to do exactly as you have said but he doesn't do it unfortunately. Me & my sister as executors are only really concerned about how we are going to account for it all given there are no records & that HMRC will likely be taking an interest in so much money going out & reducing their savings.

I may be wrong, but I think you overestimate the amount of interest HMRC will show in your parents' spending habits once they've died. You'll give them a value for the estate, they won't query how big it was at any point in the past.

 Now, if the local authority was considering funding their care visits, or paying for a care home, they WOULD be interested in where the money had gone. Actually I think even that's not true: they'd suggest there'd been some Deliberate Deprivation of Assets going on, assess their position as if they still had that money, and you'd have to show it wasn't DDA.

Sea_Shell

Savvy_Sue said:

Tuftywufty said:

We have discussed with brother to do exactly as you have said but he doesn't do it unfortunately. Me & my sister as executors are only really concerned about how we are going to account for it all given there are no records & that HMRC will likely be taking an interest in so much money going out & reducing their savings.

I may be wrong, but I think you overestimate the amount of interest HMRC will show in your parents' spending habits once they've died. You'll give them a value for the estate, they won't query how big it was at any point in the past.

 

But, they will be very interested in gifts given within the last 7 years.   

AIUI, Anything over their allowances would have to be added back into the estate.

I thought the forms are very comprehensive and will want all these details.

Tuftywufty

Sea_Shell said:

Savvy_Sue said:

Tuftywufty said:

We have discussed with brother to do exactly as you have said but he doesn't do it unfortunately. Me & my sister as executors are only really concerned about how we are going to account for it all given there are no records & that HMRC will likely be taking an interest in so much money going out & reducing their savings.

I may be wrong, but I think you overestimate the amount of interest HMRC will show in your parents' spending habits once they've died. You'll give them a value for the estate, they won't query how big it was at any point in the past.

 

But, they will be very interested in gifts given within the last 7 years.   

AIUI, Anything over their allowances would have to be added back into the estate.

I thought the forms are very comprehensive and will want all these details.

Yes I agree they will want to know about the 'gifts' ...if that's what we agree them to be. We may try the 'necessary expenses' route. Will see what the bank statements & Bro say when the time comes. Since reading up more about it; I have another concern that he may angle for a Will challenge if he sees the regular payments as necessary financial support from parents income. May explain the reason he's so keen to help out & be paid for it. That's me with my cynical head on.

Sea_Shell

Tuftywufty said:

Sea_Shell said:

Savvy_Sue said:

Tuftywufty said:

We have discussed with brother to do exactly as you have said but he doesn't do it unfortunately. Me & my sister as executors are only really concerned about how we are going to account for it all given there are no records & that HMRC will likely be taking an interest in so much money going out & reducing their savings.

I may be wrong, but I think you overestimate the amount of interest HMRC will show in your parents' spending habits once they've died. You'll give them a value for the estate, they won't query how big it was at any point in the past.

 

But, they will be very interested in gifts given within the last 7 years.   

AIUI, Anything over their allowances would have to be added back into the estate.

I thought the forms are very comprehensive and will want all these details.

Yes I agree they will want to know about the 'gifts' ...if that's what we agree them to be. We may try the 'necessary expenses' route. Will see what the bank statements & Bro say when the time comes. Since reading up more about it; I have another concern that he may angle for a Will challenge if he sees the regular payments as necessary financial support from parents income. May explain the reason he's so keen to help out & be paid for it. That's me with my cynical head on.

I'm pretty sure that he couldn't claim* any on-going support as he wouldn't be left with nothing, as he hasn't been disinherited.

If all 3 of you are beneficiaries, of an estate in excess of £1m, then he's set to inherit a not insignificant sum of money, ~£333,000.

It would be different if he wasn't in the will, or was being left a substantially smaller %. 



*People can CLAIM for anything, but that doesn't mean they will be successful.   

    

Keep_pedalling

Savvy_Sue said:

Tuftywufty said:

We have discussed with brother to do exactly as you have said but he doesn't do it unfortunately. Me & my sister as executors are only really concerned about how we are going to account for it all given there are no records & that HMRC will likely be taking an interest in so much money going out & reducing their savings.

I may be wrong, but I think you overestimate the amount of interest HMRC will show in your parents' spending habits once they've died. You'll give them a value for the estate, they won't query how big it was at any point in the past.

Estates where IHT is payable or those near IHT territory have a much higher risk of being looked at by HMRC than smaller estates. They do carry out random checks and the consequences for executors who fail to declare gifts are serious. Multiple high value cheques to one person would stand out like a sore thumb. 

BooJewels

I'm going to jump in with a suggestion, resulting from losing all of my family older than me (6 people) in the last 3 or 4 years - I mean it in the nicest possible way.   I would strongly suggest that you forget about being an executor - you're not one yet.  What you are right now is a daughter - concentrate on that role and do it the best that you can and try and create some quality memories with your parents whilst you still can.  Every single day I think of something that I don't know the answer to and can no longer ask them about. Ask them those questions now.

In respect of the inequality of support offered - I was in a similar position in that my sister lived local to our parents and I didn't.  Consequently, she did the heavy lifting on care and support duties.  When Dad rewrote his Will after Mum passed, he casually commented when planning it, that 'obviously it's just 50/50 between you both'.  I didn't think that it should be as she'd done so much more for them than me and that should perhaps be recognised.  He rang a few days later and said he'd changed it to 45/55 in her favour - on condition that she wasn't to know until the appropriate time and I was to be the one to explain and that it was my idea.  He'd been very relieved that the suggestion had come from me, as he'd already been wondering how to fairly address it.  When she found out, the only person who wasn't happy with the arrangement, was her.  I am totally at peace with it.

Sea_Shell

BooJewels said:

I'm going to jump in with a suggestion, resulting from losing all of my family older than me (6 people) in the last 3 or 4 years - I mean it in the nicest possible way.   I would strongly suggest that you forget about being an executor - you're not one yet.  What you are right now is a daughter - concentrate on that role and do it the best that you can and try and create some quality memories with your parents whilst you still can.  Every single day I think of something that I don't know the answer to and can no longer ask them about. Ask them those questions now.

 

Personally, (not speaking for the OP) this is why it's sometimes hard for people to discuss issues about their "problem" parents.

You can feel you have no one to turn to, to talk about things, as it seems crass, when others have lost theirs. 

It's very isolating.

MarzipanCrumble

Very early on in the posts I think the OP said that part of the regular remit to the brother was out of surplus income.  If you can prove that when it comes to IHT liability, it won't count as a gift.

The downside is you have to prove it from going through the bank account statements, which may be a major, major hassle.