At My Wits End
Comments
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De son tort. : as a result of his own wrong act (I had to Google this)
So, the Bereavement Advice Centre (finances department), the Police and even the solicitors (in a consultation session), who have all told me I have done nothing wrong...are in fact all themselves wrong about this.
I would appreciate it if someone with some real and useful knowledge on this matter would respond....and in plain English. I do not understand financial or legal jargon. No more time-wasters please! This is a serious matter.
The issue is that what any of our opinions are don't really matter. Its whether a court would think you had intermeddled. If you had then you would be executor de son tort as I stated above.
There can be a very fine line so no one can really say where one ends and the other begins. But I agree with getmoreforless, the potential issue arises only with the funds being transferred to your account. Not only do I think it wasn't a necessary step to safeguard the funds, but that actually it put those funds at a potential greater risk. If the funds were in a joint account then they would've passed to the survivor outside of the estate (assuming both contributed/withdrew and it wasn't just a mechanism to avoid repaying what was owed). If someone had access (whether authorised or not) then this would've stopped upon notification of death, with the account being frozen. The bank would've paid any funeral costs upon receipt of an invoice. So excess money wouldve been completely safe, short of the bank collapsing.
In your account, the funds could be used to pay for any debts you might have - not saying you would make this decision but rather when the funds were paid into your account, they became part of your general balance and you effectively appropriated them. Courts have previously taken the view that when funds are paid into a bank account, it ceases to become wages, your mums money etc as they become indistinguishable from other funds in there so its just all just a general balance. It is a loophole used by creditors in england (scotland closed the loophole a while ago). People were potentially earning too little for them to make an attachment/arrestment of earnings. But the second your wages were paid into your account, they stopped being wages and they could take every penny. It made no sense and I'm glad they closed it here, although I'm also aware it can be manipulated by a minority.You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means - Inigo Montoya, The Princess Bride0 -
Monies paid into an account can be treated initially as bare trust on behalf of the estate.
Ideally this should be a separate account just holding estate money as having it mixed with other money blurs the distinction of being held on trust or being account holders money.
Given this I think I would ring fence the money to make it clear it is estate money for now.
Question: did the bank ask you to sign an indemnity?
As said previously
I would check the status of insurance payouts.
Get some initial advice from a solicitor.
I see two options going forward.
1. Take the stance the estate is insolvent and no one will be administering.
This would be easier if there was no assets left in the estate to distribute.
2. Take the hit and do the work.
In practice there may not be a lot of difference between the two options as you would be best keeping track of all communications and records of the debts/accounts/utilities/rent/DWP etc. anyway.
I would see what a solicitor says.0 -
getmore4less wrote: »
Question: did the bank ask you to sign an indemnity?
No!
The bank didn't ask me nothing, other than what my bank details were. Nor did they forewarn me of any potential pitfalls.0 -
I think you'd probably benefit from talking to someone who knows their stuff, rather than going on posting here. There's an excellent free helpline which should do the trick: https://www.bereavementadvice.org/topics/probate-and-legal/insolvent-estates/0
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getmore4less wrote: »Ideally this should be a separate account just holding estate money as having it mixed with other money blurs the distinction of being held on trust or being account holders money.
It absolutely must be a separate account as keeping trust money separate from your own is one of the most basic duties of being a trustee. If you mix it with your own money and go under a bus or bankrupt things get very complicated. "That's not my money, it's a dead person's money that's resting in my account." "Sure it is."
Withdrawing money from an estate into your own bank account, especially when creditors have not been paid off, most certainly is intermeddling. "Safeguarding" the estate's property means something like locking the doors of their house.0 -
I think you'd probably benefit from talking to someone who knows their stuff, rather than going on posting here. There's an excellent free helpline which should do the trick: https://www.bereavementadvice.org/topics/probate-and-legal/insolvent-estates/
Read my previous posts!
I have already stated that these are the very people who have said that I have done everything properly and have nothing to worry about.0 -
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So, the Bereavement Advice Centre (finances department), the Police and even the solicitors (in a consultation session), who have all told me I have done nothing wrong...are in fact all themselves wrong about this.
...
Just a couple of questions: when the bank closed the account and transferred the balance to you, did you ask them to transfer the money to your account, or did they decide to do that themselves (with no indemnity)?
And when the solicitors advised you had done nothing wrong, did they know that the estate was probably insolvent and that the money had already been transferred to your account?
FWIW, I don't see that you've done anything intentionally wrong, but you may have been put in a potentially tricky situation because of the transfer into your account. As others have suggested that could be seen as the opposite of "safeguarding assets". At the very least you must keep a scrupulous record of what estate money has gone into your account and what estate monies have been paid out, so you have a properly auditable paper trail.
Whether the police think you've done anything wrong is irrelevant. They don't know anything about civil law (and many would say they don't know much about criminal law). They may be satisfied that your brother's allegations of fraud are groundless (I'm surprised they would bother investigating in a case like this), but if you mentioned "intermeddling" to them, you'd probably be met with a blank stare. The council wouldn't be qualified to pass an opinion either.
Unless your mum's creditors follow this up quite persistently (which they might if there's enough owed) then you're probably OK. The problem is, as posts above show, you can't really predict where a court would draw the line between what is or is not intermeddling.
Depending on how you feel about it (and you feel you've done nothing wrong and feel you can justify what you've done) I would be inclined to go back to the solicitors you've already consulted and ask their advice. I would, but it's up to you.
PS - unless you've got some family feud with your brother or he's a totally unreasonable person, I'd be a bit concerned that he's reported you to the police for fraud. The police may be happy you've done "nothing wrong" from a fraud point of view, but why has your brother done that? Does he think something does not look right? All the more reason to ask a solicitor.
EDIT: I would follow the other advice to tell the creditors that the estate is insolvent (if it is). It's perhaps debatable how far you can say no-one is administering it(?). Hence legal advice.0 -
Read my previous posts!
I have already stated that these are the very people who have said that I have done everything properly and have nothing to worry about.
Then why are you posting here? Give them another call if you're bothered.Googling on your question might have been both quicker and easier, if you're only after simple facts rather than opinions!0 -
Then why are you posting here? Give them another call if you're bothered.
Quite. Your thread seems to be mainly populated by amateurs who are doing a bit of googling and then proudly trotting out bits of legal jargon which they don't really understand. It won't help you - so why do it?1 -
Manxman_in_exile wrote: »Just a couple of questions: when the bank closed the account and transferred the balance to you, did you ask them to transfer the money to your account, or did they decide to do that themselves (with no indemnity)?
I didn't ask them to, they just asked for my bank details and transferred it (we used the same bank).And when the solicitors advised you had done nothing wrong, did they know that the estate was probably insolvent and that the money had already been transferred to your account?
Yes! I told them everything!PS - unless you've got some family feud with your brother or he's a totally unreasonable person, I'd be a bit concerned that he's reported you to the police for fraud. The police may be happy you've done "nothing wrong" from a fraud point of view, but why has your brother done that? Does he think something does not look right? All the more reason to ask a solicitor.
Basically, yes, he is being quite unreasonable. He was being sort of reasonable up until the funeral. After the funeral, he started kicking up about the finances, accusing me of "not imparting information to him" based on a single message that I could not answer immediately as I had to go out for an appointment. He has also managed to !!!! off just about everybody. My sister, my uncle, my best friend who was at the funeral, to name a few.
Oh, and when I went to the police, it was to see if I had a case for criminal harassment against him. They explained that he had "skirted the bounds of criminal harassment" and that I should block him (barring a single line of communication regarding the estate) and keep logs of this and any future harassment. The police reassured me at the interview that I had done nothing fraudulent. You cannot unintentionally commit fraud. It HAS to be intentional.0
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