Letters of administration - is it needed?

itzmee

My brother aged 54 died recently.  He was single, never married and had no children.  He didn't own property and had about £2100 in his bank account which is being used towards the funeral costs.  He also had a couple of private pensions totalling about £6k.  Do I need to apply for letters of administration or is this not needed as his estate is so small.

itzmee

Also there is no will and nothing else of value owned.  

Brie

Didn't apply for either FiL or MiL who had a bit more than your brother.  But they were also older and in receipt of their pensions. 

Only thing to do is to tell the pension administrators who presumably will want to see the death certificate before doing anything about distributing anything that might be owed from his pensions.  You might want to ring them to see if they need an original, certified or a simple copy of the DC.  

If you can access his bank account you can see what goes out of his account regularly and you might want to ensure that the rest of his creditors are informed as well - gas, electric, water, council tax etc.  

Sorry for your loss.

RAS

Sorry for your loss and needing to sort this out.

It's going to be down to the pension providers, so give them a ring. Are there any death in service payments and did he nominate recipients?

Keep_pedalling

It is going to depend on whether the pension providers will pay our without it. Normally pension fall outside the estate, but with no beneficiaries that may not be the case.