Deceased Person's Investments

shabbydo6

LOST PAYMENTS! My mother died in October 2022. She had fairly substantial holdings with large UK investment companies from which she received regular monthly dividend payments as her income. The investment companies were notified of her death and sent a death certificate within two weeks. This was also done at my mother's bank who froze her account. As is normal procedure, a dividend has an XD date and a payment date a few weeks later. In my mother's case her investments met the XD date but, by the time of the payment date, her bank account had been frozen. Three dividend payments were rejected and returned to the investment company. This is where the problem begins.
  On being notified of an investor's death, an investment company will suspend dividend payments and place the proceeds in a 'Client Holding Account'. Upon receipt of Grant of Probate, access can be gained to this account. CHECK VERY CAREFULLY. Fortunately, my mother kept good records of payments and, when I cleared the Client Holding Account, I noticed three dividend payments missing. These were the dividend payments from around the time of mum's passing that the company had authorized for payment but the bank had rejected. They did not go into the Client Holding Account. It took a determined effort, involving many phone calls and letters, to gain an answer from the investment company. They were unable to provide an explanation as to why the payments went missing nor could they determine where the payments went on being returned from my mother's closed bank account. Human error was their flimsy excuse. These payments would NEVER have been paid out. 
  This must happen to many investments and many relatives of deceased investors will have payments sitting with investment companies, never to see the light of day. My advice is: don't trust the big companies, never assume that they are right, check records and be persistent. Good luck.

whatsthenews

Thanks for this. Just at the beginning of the probate process for my father and he has shares with several companies.