Probate solicitors appreciate the difficulties in acting as an executor for an estate. However, these difficulties can be ten-fold if the testator has not anticipated them and tried to make things easier.
There are steps you can take to make sure your executors are able to administer your estate as efficiently as possible. You should contemplate the ideas listed below:
1. Keep a list of all your investments, bank accounts, premium bonds, insurances, pensions and other allowances, shareholdings and other valuables. Keep a copy at home in a safe place, and ask your solicitor to put a copy with your will. Update this periodically.
2. Include details of your buildings and contents insurance on this list. It is important your executors notify them of what has happened and agree with them arrangements for visiting the property etc if it is empty. Make sure your executors know the code to your security alarm, if relevant.
3. If you have particular funeral wishes, make sure your executors are aware of these. You can leave a memo with your will that includes these. Being faced with having to arrange a funeral when you do not know what the person's wishes were is very stressful.
4. If you move home, make sure you inform both your solicitor and executors. It sounds obvious but in the stress of the move, many people forget!
5. Make sure details of any "free insurance - often provided with bank accounts - are kept.
6. Keep all original documents, such as share certificates, passbooks, bank statements, insurance policy documents - together and in a safe place - ensure that the executors know where to find them and have any codes or keys they need to access them.
7. Contemplate including any pension death benefits or life assurances in a Trust so that payouts are made directly to the beneficiaries under the will, rather than into the estate. This can mean your beneficiaries pay reduced inheritance taxes, whilst releasing cash for them sooner.
8. Register any title to land you own with the land registry if this has not already been done - this may facilitate a subsequent transfer.
9. Keep your will in a safe place - many solicitors will store your will for you in a safe facility free of charge. Make sure your executors know where the original is.
10. Make sure your executors know the name and contact details of your solicitor, so they can get help and advice if they need it.
11. To ensure that your executors can claim all available inheritance allowances on your death, if relevant keep a copy of your birth and death certificate with your will and, if relevant, those of your spouse together with a copy of your marriage certificate.
Obtaining probate following the death of love of a loved one can be complex as well as hard to handle emotionally following the death of a loved one. Most probate solicitors can you handle probate - alternatively when preparing your will, you may prefer to appoint your trusted solicitor as a professional executor on your behalf.
Bonallack & Bishop in Salisbury are a firm of specialist probate solicitors with a team experienced in contested wills. Senior partner Tim Bishop is responsible for all major strategic decisions and has expanded the firm by 1000% in 12 years. He has plans for its continued growth, seeing himself as a businessman who owns a law firm.
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