No will and no blood relatives makes things difficult for in laws and friends.

WYSPECIAL

A funeral director won't mind who is arranging the funeral with them so long as they are paid.

Savvy_Sue

WYSPECIAL said:

A funeral director won't mind who is arranging the funeral with them so long as they are paid.

And they'll be sending the bill to whoever does arrange it, regardless of their relationship to the deceased. 

Bostonerimus1

Savvy_Sue said:

WYSPECIAL said:

A funeral director won't mind who is arranging the funeral with them so long as they are paid.

And they'll be sending the bill to whoever does arrange it, regardless of their relationship to the deceased. 

We've had the funeral and the bank has released the funds to pay for it to the funeral director. It seems that the one thing you can do before probate is take money from the estate to pay for the funeral. The genealogical company only found us in-law relatives, but after looking through my sister-in-laws personal effects we managed to find some long lost living blood relatives and they are now applying for probate. So a good outcome.

WillowLeaf

It's good you've got the outcome you wanted, well done.

Good for the long-lost relatives as well who will have an unexpected inheritance.

Not good for the genealogical company who failed at their job.

Bostonerimus1

WillowLeaf said:

It's good you've got the outcome you wanted, well done.

Good for the long-lost relatives as well who will inherit an unexpected amount.

Not good for the genealogical company who failed at their job.

The hospital asked the genealogical company to find relatives and they don't seem to have done a very good job as searching on my sister-in-law's maiden name would have produced some leads. The one difficulty would have been that many of those people were born outside the UK in the 1930s. But I'm happy that the estate will now go to family rather than "The Crown" and will be wrapped up in the usual timescale rather than waiting for the Treasury Solicitor to deal with it, which, I'm told, would take several years.