share issue - should we pay to get inherited shares?

kazzah

Hi all
please forgive me if i am not posting on the correct forum- I am a novice!
I am after ANY help or advice you can give.

4 weeks ago I received a letter through the post from a company asking me if I knew the current whereabouts of a lady with the same surname as me - the company had done a farily good job of tracing the family as the lady in question was my late mother in law who died in 2002
we contacted the company to find out why they wanted to know- to discover that my late MIL had been entitled to a share issue when her building society went to a bank - she had never claimed them ( probably didn't understand all the paperwork as she was very elderly) and they had been transferred into a cash amount of about £800

to cut a long story short- we sent off the will ( hubby is sole beneficiary) and the death certificate - no probate form as the estate was so small there was no need to go to probate.
We get a letter yesterday saying thanks for the documents - please complete another form to indemnify us against fraudulent claims and send £69 administration fee !!!!!!!!!!
now DH is currently unemployed and not in receipt of ANY benefits due to a small pension from a previous job - and quite frankly £800 would pay the mortgage for us one month and we could REALLY do with the money!
BUT I am VERY reluctant to send the company £69 - what if it is a scam?
and I TRULY don't believe my DH should pay someone to give him what is rightfully his inheritance
so- do any of you wonderful people have any ideas of how we can claim this money ourselves? or if we can do it without the company profitting from bereaved people???
thanks in anticipation

jonesMUFCforever

Who exactly has sent you these forms?

Anyone can check by ringing the registrars of the company to see if this information is true.

Who are you asked to make the cheque out to - is it a registrar company or an insurance company or someone else?

kazzah

Hi
the company that we are dealing with is called computer share and they are the ones the cheque needs making out to.
no mention of any insurance compnay at all
Kazzah

dzug1

The £69 fee is not a scam - it's a standard amount payable to the share registrar to transfer or sell shares where a share certificate cannot be produced.

Computershare are a reputable share registration company.

From what you have said it all looks above board to me - even if the fee is a little steep (well higher than it was a few years ago, which is maybe not surprising.)

kazzah

i still think it's diabolical - when my late mum died I didn't have to pay anything to transfer her woolwich shares into my name
thanks for the info though
Kazzah

dzug1

kazzah wrote: »

i still think it's diabolical - when my late mum died I didn't have to pay anything to transfer her woolwich shares into my name
thanks for the info though
Kazzah

Presumably you had the share certificate to transfer then though? That's normally free.

Agree it's a steep charge.

kazzah

there wasn't any share certificate issued- she was very old and when the letter came through telling her to claim - she never did- computer share told us that as there had been NO communiction from her about them at all so they had been converted to a cash amount - so as far as we know, no-one has ever had a share certificate - when we went through her papers when she died there was the letter about the share allocation with a deadline date on it and we just assumed that she hadn't claimed them and we had lost them as a result- I know it probably seems like I am being awkward over a relatively small amount- but I do think that it is money for nothing - they have seen the will and the death certificate and as you say, if a certificate had been issued it would have been transferred for free.
t seems that people with a small estate to leave that doesn't require probate are being penalised- her whole estate was only about £3000 so we didn't go to probate as it was so small and DH was the only beneficiary - if we had a grant of probate we could get the cash value of the shares free of charge !!

jonesMUFCforever

I agree that Computershare are a registrar company.
The fee of £69 is what I would expect to pay for something like this - the papers will have some form of indemnity which is why the fee is high.

Look at it this way - you will get around £731 for free.

Up to you if you do nothing you won't get the payout.

kazzah

I know that they have us over a barrel and if we don't pay we won't get anything- BUT why should they recieve £69 for nothing?
when we closed bank accounts and building society accounts we didn't have to PAY them to receive the funds in the account - and we had to show them the same will and death certificate as computershare have seen - presumeably the banks etc ALSO had administration costs as a result of closing the accounts? - so why didn't they charge us?
call me cynical - but this is VERY easy money for doing nothing except releasing funds that are legally ours.
KAzzah

jonesMUFCforever

kazzah wrote: »

I know that they have us over a barrel and if we don't pay we won't get anything- BUT why should they recieve £69 for nothing?
when we closed bank accounts and building society accounts we didn't have to PAY them to receive the funds in the account - and we had to show them the same will and death certificate as computershare have seen - presumeably the banks etc ALSO had administration costs as a result of closing the accounts? - so why didn't they charge us?
call me cynical - but this is VERY easy money for doing nothing except releasing funds that are legally ours.
KAzzah

It's not for nothing!
They will indemnify any future claimant against a wrong payout here ie think of it like an insurance policy in case they pay out to the wrong people.

There is absolutely no way round it.
You pay and you get paid out or you don't and the money remains in their dormant account.

kazzah

yes I know what it is for - to reduce THEIR liability if they pay out to the wrong person - but as there is only ONE beneificiary named in the will - my husband then there is no-one else eligible to benefit from the money
but surely the fact that there have been NO dividends paid on the sum for over 6 years would cover any indemnity insurance costs and also those costs are very high in comparison to the beneficial sum -and of course we don't even know if they do posess indemnity insurance as we haven't see the policy.
why didn't we have to pay indemnity insurance to the bank and building society when we closed her account there? - they would be in the same position if someone suddenly turned up and claimed that they were owed part of the monies - yet we didn't have to pay them this fee.