What does Administering an Estate mean?

If you make a will, your executors have the job of sorting out your estate. If there’s no will, usually your next of kin does this.

They can instruct your solicitor to deal with matters on their behalf and to advise them correctly.

This will involve:

1. Extracting a grant of probate in order to share your estate out or

letters of administration, if there is no will

2.  Identifying your assets and your debts at the time of your death and

3.  Filing a return to HMRC, claiming reliefs against inheritance tax and paying any tax that may be due

paying any unpaid bills or other debts

4.  identifying beneficiaries who will inherit

5. If necessary, arranging for the sale of assets such as property

It can be helpful to keep all your financial documents in one safe place and tell someone where this is. This can make it easier for your executors to find all the information they need after you have died.

A grant of probate or letters of administration is a certificate which shows the amount you owned and owed when you died. Typically your estate can’t be given to your beneficiaries until a certificate has been granted.  Your executors or personal representatives’ names will be on the certificate. The certificate allows them to sell or transfer your estate, so that it can be distributed according to your will. If you don’t have a will, your estate will be distributed according to the rules of intestacy. If the estate is straightforward, getting probate may only take a few weeks. But in more complicated cases it can take many months or longer.

In small estates some money and belongings can go straight to your beneficiaries without the need for probate.

This might happen if:

1. the estate is made up of cash and personal belongings only

(and the cash is below a certain limit)

2. money or property are held jointly (as joint tenants or with a

survivorship destination).

3. a pay out from life insurance held in trust for beneficiaries.

4. A lump sum or income from a pension scheme where you have

chosen who should receive it

5. Up to £10,000 in your Credit Union account

As long as you have completed a nomination form, these will go straight to your beneficiaries after your death.

For help on sorting out an estate and dealing with inheritance tax, call Luke Curran & Co. Solicitors on 02830267134 or email us at law@lukecurran.co.uk