RNRB Allowance

Technosaurus

Hi all - I've been around the houses on the internet on this and it's as clear as mud, so yet again I find myself hoping you generous folk can provide the answer!

Fil passed away Sept 25, owned his home with Mil (his wife) who remains in the property. My wife is executor.

HOWEVER… when we sent the Probate forms in, we got an email saying words to the effect of "you have not ticked the Resident Nil Rate Band box"…. we replied instantly to query this saying we may have got that wrong and could someone contact us to clarify. Got an auto-reply back saying you can expect a response in 12 weeks.

In the interim, Probate was granted, we got the certificate and have been able to distribute everything - great. However we haven't received a reply re RNRB and given Mil is staying in the property this is something we'd like to get right.

So I went on the internet and HMRC website said we just need to send in IHT402… when filling that out the questions don't seem to pertain to the relatively simple circumstances we are in, it seems more geared towards 2 people having died rather than one. Both my wife and I are educated people but we can't make head nor tail of some of it. So I'm asking this wonderful forum:

• have I got the wrong form?
• if so, which is the correct form?
• or should we just keep ringing the Probate office for clarity? (even though Probate has now been granted so I imagine it's not their problem any more?)

Thank you all so much

Keep_pedalling

if they owned their home as tenants in common who did he leave his share to? It would not be normal to claim the RNRB on the first death.

Technosaurus

Hi @Keep_pedalling it was jointly owned and his share (and indeed everything he owned) has been left to his wife, my MiL

Am I to glean that actually we may not need to apply for RNRB at all?

The reason we want to get it right is that he had an unexpectedly high amount of savings so, without sounding too morbid, when MiL passes away IHT will potentially be an issue as assets and savings will be in the £1m mark today, likely to rise going forward (MiL is getting some Estate Planning advice from her IFA after new tax year starts)

So we want to make sure that by not ticking a box somewhere that we haven't accidentally reduced any of her IHT-free allowances!

Woodstok2000

As there's no inheritance tax between spouses, if he's left everything to his wife, there's no need to claim any nil rate band or rnrb.

In the future, you will need to transfer the unused nrb and rnrb from him to your mil, but as far as I'm aware you do that after she has passed.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/claim-to-transfer-any-unused-residence-nil-rate-band-iht436

Technosaurus

@Woodstok2000 Perfect, thank you

I was erroneously under the impression we had to do it now for his to transfer to her, and then again upon her death

Clearly I was wrong. Thanks for the clarity

Keep_pedalling

No you would claim the RNRB and transferable NRB on the second death.