Is probate needed.

jo.anne

Helping out my ex partner whos last parent died last December. There was three surviving sons with one son who was still living at home with his dad. When their father died he left no will and my ex partner although he was the eldest child decided to let the brother living at home to sort everyting out. There have been lots of excuses and dribs and drabs of money given to mhy ex from the bank accounts and the brother said he was going to do up the house before he puts it up for sale. This has now been almost 12 months and there has been no mention of putting the house up for sale and seems the brother keeps saying he just needs to sign this and that. I spoke to my ex who is clearly stressed over this but he has always been  one to shy away from conflict so has not really been pushing his brother, I suggested I check online for the probate and it seems there are no records which means the brother has not applied for it. What can my ex do to make the brother put the house up for sale?>

Keep_pedalling

Probate is defiantly required, although when there is no will that is termed as letters of administration. If no one else has started it there is nothing stopping your ex applying for it. 

Savvy_Sue

Keep_pedalling said:

Probate is defiantly required, although when there is no will that is termed as letters of administration. If no one else has started it there is nothing stopping your ex applying for it. 

Of course, the brother may say he's started the process, but I think (not 100% sure) that unless he's submitted the forms, then the OP can do it. Whoever gets them in first can administer the estate, including selling the house. 

However, it might be useful if the OP joined forces with the other non-resident brother, and approached resident brother to ask what help he needs to apply for Letters of Administration, prep the house and sell it. (Having said that, it's often not worth doing that much before selling a house.)

Will a third of the house value enable resident brother to buy somewhere else outright? If not would he be able to pay a mortgage? 

jo.anne

The brother living at home apparently has money so assumed he could get buy somewhere or rent. Out of curiosity if the brother could not afford to buy somewhere or rent what are the two remaining brothers options. Can I note that the other brother is close to the brother living at home so could very well be working with him. If probate had been applied for would it have shown on the Gov.uk website?

Savvy_Sue

jo.anne said:

The brother living at home apparently has money so assumed he could get buy somewhere or rent. Out of curiosity if the brother could not afford to buy somewhere or rent what are the two remaining brothers options. Can I note that the other brother is close to the brother living at home so could very well be working with him. If probate had been applied for would it have shown on the Gov.uk website?

I don't think it shows when probate was applied for: until it's actually granted there's nothing to see. However, he could ask when the application was actually submitted, "because I know there are delays and I'd just like to know the earliest we might expect to hear anything". 

A sale can be forced through the courts but that's honestly a last resort: hugely expensive and time consuming, may not leave a lot of estate to share ... 

Trying to open lines of communication with the other two brothers is definitely the way to start. 

jo.anne

Following on from this, the house is worth around £230k and money in account is around 30k. Based on my ex partner has spoken to the brother who has admitted he has not done anything and said my ex can do it. I said I would help him has I made applications for probate in the past but this was around 12 years ago. So does he need to make a list of all items in the house and their worth and then with the money in account and an estimaton of house sale is it probate that needs to be applied for or letters of administration or are they the same thing?

RAS

Administration is for estates that do not have a defined executor. If there is a will, then it is admin "with will."

In the absence of a will, the right to administer falls first to the spouse, then children etc. Most importantly, regardless of anything a donor might have said, the rules intestacy apply.

In this case, splitting the estate between the three siblings, unless there is another deceased sibling, in which case their share is allocated depending on their will, or the rules of intestacy.

You need an estimate of the house value, and details of all the accounts on the day of death. Household goods are normally assessed as being worth £500-£1k depending on size etc, unless there's a classic car, or a Rembrandt in the loft? 

The brothers need to start decluttering now. The live in brother needs to decide whether he wants furniture and white goods etc. 

One thing to note is that since live-in bro has delayed administration, the non-residential siblings risk a CGT liability if the house sells for more than the estimated value. Since the whole estate is below the IHT limit, use the EA's higher estimates rather then trying to keep it low.

jo.anne

RAS. Thanks for you insight. Things seem to be turning sour has ez has asked for death certificate, bank statements, cost of funeral, any other shares etc and the brother is now saying he does not have any bank details saying all account closed, also he states no longer got death certificate (I know this is easy enough to order a copy) but how does my ex go about finding out now any balances of bank accounts

RAS

It appears that the live in brother has "intermeddled" in the estate. So he will have contacted he banks, spoken to the bereavement departments, signed an undertaking that he's authorised to collect and distribute the estate before the banks released the money to him.

The banks should be able to release copies of those undertakings and advise of the sums. But they won't keep documents for ever. Does ex have any idea which banks dad used? Or did bro ever mention, "this is the money from Y bank".

Where is the other brother in all of this? If he's not prepared to assert himself, the live in brother can mismanage the accounts and just sit in the house.  But the other brother needs to understand that the longer probate takes the higher the CGT bill he faces.

Ex probably needs advice on the intermeddling and possibly contentious probate. Can he afford a half hour consultation, perhaps with the other brother?

jo.anne

Is there anyway ex can find out what banks his dad may have held. He is unsure what accounts his dad had

RAS

There is a process which would show any "lost accounts", those that brother hasn't closed and emptied. There's no real process which shows closed accounts

One possibility that I can think of is that ex pursues the money. Where have these "dribs and drabs" of money come from? If ex received a cheque, there'd be a sort code. Ditto if a bank transfer for which his own bank may be able to identify the sort code at the very least?. But bro could have sent everything to his siblings from his own account. 

Essentially, ex needs to talk to the other brother. Have either of them actually been into the house in the last year?