Transfer of IHT Allowance from a Death in 2010

JLRetired

Having just successfully applied for probate for my mother's estate - thank you to the guidance I have received on this forum - I realise I need to sort out my own financial records for when my children have to do the same for me.
My husband died in 2010 leaving everything to me, 'everything' at that time being his share of our house and some investments. I'm embarrassed to say that I have no record of the figures I used when I submitted the probate application, my energies were focussed on dealing with the impact on our children of him dying at a relatively young age. The gross value of the estate stated on the grant of probate is approximately £57k, which seems strange since his share of the house would have been much more than that. 
How do I untangle this so that I can provide my children with the necessary accurate information when the time comes to deal with my estate? I hope it won't be for a while yet!

Marcon

JLRetired said:

Having just successfully applied for probate for my mother's estate - thank you to the guidance I have received on this forum - I realise I need to sort out my own financial records for when my children have to do the same for me.
My husband died in 2010 leaving everything to me, 'everything' at that time being his share of our house and some investments. I'm embarrassed to say that I have no record of the figures I used when I submitted the probate application, my energies were focussed on dealing with the impact on our children of him dying at a relatively young age. The gross value of the estate stated on the grant of probate is approximately £57k, which seems strange since his share of the house would have been much more than that. 
How do I untangle this so that I can provide my children with the necessary accurate information when the time comes to deal with my estate? I hope it won't be for a while yet!

Happily this is more straightforward than you fear.

If the house was jointly owned (rather than owned as 'tenants in common') then your husband's share automatically passed to you on his death and wouldn't have been included in his estate - hence the estate value being lower than you expected.

If everything was left to you, then your husband's nil rate band would pass to you (or more accurately your estate) on your death, as would the nil residence band (even though it didn't exist in 2010). See https://www.gov.uk/guidance/inheritance-tax-transfer-of-threshold

JLRetired

thank you for the link, I had missed that page on the gov.uk site.