Expert Probate Solicitors
Has someone close to you recently passed away? In order to deal with their estate, you will need advice from experienced and professional probate solicitors. Courtyard Solicitors have extensive experience on all aspects of making a will or obtaining a grant of probate.
Probate is the legal process of dealing with a deceased person’s estate and involves taking instructions from the executor of the deceased's Will (Grant of Probate). When there is no Will a grant of Letters of Administration is applied for.
Grant of Probate / Letters of Administration
To make application to the Probate Registry to obtain a Grant of Probate or Letters of Administration we first must obtain details as to the assets including any properties, and liabilities of the deceased's estate. This means contacting all of the organisations for example banks, building societies, companies in which shares are held and private pension which held monies of the deceased to obtain details as to the amounts/shareholdings as at the date of death. This will determine whether an application has firstly to be made to HM Revenue Customs. For further information as to whether or not a return has to be made to the Inland Revenue please visit - https://www.gov.uk/inheritance-tax
If a return has to be made to the Inland Revenue we will prepare the relevant forms including any applications for reliefs which will reduce the value of the estate for tax purposes. We will then submit the forms. At this stage it will be necessary for any applicable tax to be paid.
Once the Inland Revenue have issued the Certificate confirming that any tax due has been paid we can then proceed to apply for a Grant of Probate or Letters of Administration to the Probate Registry.
You may have to pay a fee to apply for probate. Whether you need to pay depends on the value of the estate. If the value of the estate is over £5,000, the application fee is £273. There’s no fee if the estate is £5,000 or less.
You can order extra copies of the probate document for £1.50 each. This means you can send them to different organisations at the same time. We usually ask initially for 10 copies.
Further information is available from the Gov.UK website here - https://www.gov.uk/applying-for-probate…;
Once the grant has been obtained, we will then deal with the following:
• collection of the assets of the estate requesting the release of the funds held and for these to be paid in to our Client Account
• discharge all liabilities including the Inheritance Tax (if applicable)
• paying funeral expenses
• if there is a property dealing with its sale or if it is going to a beneficiary arranging for its transfer and for this to be registered at HM Land Registry
• distributing the assets pursuant to the terms of the will or in accordance with the rules of intestacy
Typical Time scale
To obtain information in order to consider whether or not an application needs to be made to the Inland Revenue on average takes 8 - 10 weeks, this includes contacting organisations by letter.
Once we have this information if an Inland Revenue Return is required preparing this will take approximately a week. At the time of submitting to the Inland Revenue we will be able to advise on their current time scales.
Once the Inland Revenue have issued their certificate or if we have not had to submit papers to them we can then apply to the Probate Registry for the Grant of Probate or Letters of Administration. At the time of submitting to the Probate Registry we will be able to advise on their current time scale.
Our fees for Probate are based on the Law Society’s recommended fee scale
Fees
A discounted hourly rate of £125 + VAT is chargeable on the amount of time spent on the above plus
1% of the value of assets other than land and 0.5% of the value of land + VAT
N.B. VAT is charged at the standard rate.
On average we will spend between 10 and 20 hours of work dealing with the above matters.
Ask our probate solicitors for a estimate
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