Here at Onions & Davies, we help a lot of people with the administration of the estate of someone who has died.
We offer a range of ways of helping, including: charging a fixed fee for drawing up the paperwork needed to report to HMRC and obtain the Grant of Probate; charging for the provision of “as and when” assistance to the Executors; and charging for dealing with the whole administration from beginning to end. Our clients find that we can relieve them of the worry of dealing with the huge amount of paperwork that an estate administration involves and that we can give them the peace of mind that they will not fall foul of the Revenue or possible claims against the estate.
The initial process involves the Executors identifying what assets and liabilities are in the deceased’s estate, including what may be in related trusts or anything that was given away by the deceased within the seven years before he or she died, valuing those assets and liabilities, reporting those values to the Revenue, paying any necessary tax and using the information to apply to the Probate Registry for a Grant of Probate. This is the document that is needed to close or transfer bank accounts, sell or transfer shares or other investments, and deal with properties.
An application to the Probate Registry currently involves the payment of a fee of £155 (if the estate is worth more than £5,000) and the Government have been reviewing this charge. They have just completed a consultation and on Friday 24th February, they published their response to this consultation.
Unfortunately, in our view, and in the view of most of the professionals who, like us, want the best for our clients, the Government have decided to ignore the conclusion of the consultation and are intending to raise the Probate Court fees.
The fees will now be charged in bands, depending on the value of an estate, with the lower band, where no fee is to be charged, to be raised to £50,000 and then for the fees to be £300 for estates that exceed £50,000 but do not exceed £300,000; £1,000 for estates that exceed £300,000 but do not exceed £500,000; £4,000 for estates that exceed £500,000 but do not exceed £1m; £8,000 for estates that exceed £1m but do not exceed £1.6m; £12,000 for estates that exceeds £1.6m but do not exceed £2m and £20,000 for estates that exceed £2m.
This is a significant increase, especially bearing in mind that assets of the deceased usually cannot be accessed until a Grant of Probate has been issued and so it may well be down to the Executors to fund this fee and wait to be reimbursed from the estate.
Subject to parliamentary approval, it is expected that fee increases will come into effect in May 2017.
The full Government response is available here.
It will now be even more important to obtain professional advice to help with the administration of estates and both Chris Milne and Rachel Richards here will be happy to assist you.
Please ring 01630 652405 for further information.