Executor expenses

Bugsy27 wrote: »

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I have had to travel to a few places as he wanted some of belongings take to certain charities to do with his church can I claim fuel or anything else ............

Expenses such as this can be claimed against the estate. If you used your own car I suggest you apply the HMRC guideline figure of 45p / mile which is used when one uses their own car for company business.

With regards to your time off work it would be a nice gesture if the other beneficiaries perhaps recognised this in some way, whether that be chipping in to the costs, a thank you card or whatever. Sounds like that may not be the case here though....

We claimed for postage, travel, heavy duty black sacks, photocopying etc. Everything we had a proper receipt for.

Stand alone it all sounds really petty but it amounted to about £130, & given that none of the 3 beneficiaries who also lived locally could be bothered to help empty the property (1 being co-executor), we intended it to look petty.

Afraid you can't claim for 'time', you could have put the option of a house clearance company to the other beneficiaries if they weren't willing to help. Unpaid while taking time off work to do it alone was your choice I'm afraid. Sorry.

sammyjammy wrote: »

Who couldn't you have cleared the property in non work time? Honestly it doesn't sound to me anything that a child wouldn't do for their deceased parent whether executor or not

I don't know if you've ever been involved in a full clearance. I have ...

We'd done a rapid first pass through the house thinking 'oh my goodness' ... As part of this we'd taken at least a car full of stuff to a charity shop, which can only be done during working hours or on a Saturday. We'd taken at least a car full of stuff to the tip, which may have to be done during the working week because not all tips will allow house obviously large clearances at busy times like the weekend. Any trips to the tip involving anything more than bags required two people because the staff just tell you where to go, they don't normally help unload. Also some tips require proof that you live in the area, and don't even think about hiring a van because vans have to be pre-registered with proof that you live in the area.

We then employed a house clearance company, who first 'set' the house by clearing some of the clutter to make it look better for sale. Then they emptied it. They were worth every single penny of their large fee. Periodically one of my siblings would wonder if we could do more of the clearance ourselves, and I would remind them of the difficulty of getting old-fashioned furniture into a car and out again at the tip.

now I realise that the OP has been clearing a flat rather than a large property in which 'stuff' of many different kinds has accumulated over many years, but if I'd been expected to do that job with my co-executor during non-working hours and without professional assistance, I'd have handed the job over to those who thought that was a reasonable thing to do.

The other thing to bear in mind is that if it was a rented flat, there was probably a very tight timescale, perhaps as little as two weeks. Doing that without taking time off work would tax many of us, I feel.

We (my co-executor and I) charged bin bags, petrol at 45p per mile, postage and other legitimate expenses to the estate. And, of course, the full cost of the house clearance.