nik52wrx

My wife's mother has recently passed away (father died several years ago) and is therefore due inheritance.
We didn't realise what a mine field we were entering as far as probate was concerned.
Basically we are unsure whether to take the solicitor or bank route.
Our solicitor charges £180 per hour and as yet we are unable to obtain a fixed price or indication of likely cost. Our bank, Barclays, offers a service but it this appears to be a third party company (ITC) which when googled has negative feedback.
As the estate is around 350k we are nervous about making what could be a costly mistake.
Advice welcome......

Nik.

madscoob

iTrader: (3)

i did it myself with cousins help . its not difficult plenty of help from cab cost nothing to do . as a only son this was simple as everything was mine , local registry office will help you as well and all the info you need is available on line

shaunywrx

Someone i know is just doing it themselves now, they say its a bit of messing about but if you've got the time it's not difficult (their words not mine) and you'll save yourself a few thousand!

nik52wrx

Time is the problem as we both work full time.
Quotes so far are £180 per hour with no time limit and barclays via thier third party company £4000 all in.

Trout

iTrader: (1)

I know a great probate lawyer in London. I don't have her work details but have her personal email address I can PM you. Her name is Bindar.

ALi-B

iTrader: (1)

Did it myself. Saved a fortune in solicitor costs....and yes if you look at their fee structure, its basically a open excuse to charge you whatever they like: overhead charges (wtf?!?), charge per phone call, charge per letter, extra charge for a two page letter, you name it they'll charge it and to cap it off a % fee ontop of whatever the estate is worth, even if its 1%, if thats on a £350K estate, then thats a fair old whack.

Citizen's Advice Bureau offer good help with what you need to do.


I should dig out the fee structure that our (ex)solicitors tried to use on us (we asked for it in advance to proceeding). Lets just say its quite comical (unless your the one paying the bill).

jaytc2003

iTrader: (1)

I will find out the costs of the solicitor we used. We had an issue as whilst my father was living (albeit in a home) my sister had power of attorney on his accounts etc, so when he passed away we had to sort that bit out first. Dont think it was anything near 180 an hour though, think it was roughly £700 ish quid to get the whole lot sorted, I will see if I still have the letters/info (they do charge per letter and also for receiving telephone calls) I think the solicitor we used though didnt charge a flat rate for the hour so say it was a 10 min call, it would be charged out at 15 mins etc

Midlife......

iTrader: (2)

Sorry to hear about your loss

As you can gather from my username I'm no spring chicken and have been through this a number of times.

A good probate solicitor is worth their weight in gold to sort out all the legal stuff, believe me !

£180 an hour is pretty reasonable, If you want to buy me by the hour it's £300-£450 !

Where are you ?


Shaun

Trout

iTrader: (1)

My mother-in-law did the probate herself when her father and then her mother died. It has taken over four years to sort out...

ALi-B

iTrader: (1)

It can take that long; there is no rush (except to pay the inland revenue the IHT within 6months, correctional payments can be made or refunded after that, and yes, you should get interest on any refund ). Unless there are baying relatives eager for money (if so tell them to wait - they'll get nothing 'til probate is granted, and they need to know that can take over a year if complications arise)

The last bunch of solictors (the bunch with the farcical charges) we used to sort out my late Aunt's estate (about £20K...house sold to fund nursing home fees so not much residual left) took a staggering 8months and they still had us do most of the donkey work. It was only a single sodding savings account!

My current solicitor just charges flat rate. And if its something I can do myself, he'll say so. No-nonsense, and I don't get charged if I take him out for a pub lunch to discuss things.

fast bloke

As there is minimal IHT liability (10k) I think you should do it yourself. If there is no will it might take you a year or more to have probate granted, but it will take a solicitor a similar amount of time and cost you another 20k. CAB are excellent to guide you through the process

Leslie

Is there anyone who is genuinely worth that much money?

Les

fast bloke

Yeah - a fit, discrete, 18yo clean hooker with big **** or a run of the mill solicitor. I wonder if Midlife has has a medical recently

madscoob

iTrader: (3)

the whole thing took about 3 weeks from start to finish and cost me sod all . there was no will just mothers wishs to adhear to . cousin got mums fan collection (worth thousands and now in a museam in london somewhere being restored for free , auntie had a few of mums things , but house money and jewelery was mine , filled out the probate forms declared house value , because it came to just under 300k no tax to pay . gordon brown got nothing from me , mum had spent most of her money on the house so i wouldnt get a tax bill. as they can only go on previous valuations of house , but it had new roof , new mahogany windows, cavity wall insulation, new bathroom, new kitchen. new driveway , and was completely rerendered , and i had the scoob as a gift the previous tax year. as for value of jewelery (PROOVE IT ) the cant so dont bother putting it on the forms