Podcast – Bereavement

Welcome to the With You All the Way podcast, brought to you by brachers, providing legal support to families and businesses since 1895.

So on today’s podcast, on our with you all the way series. I’m Claire Waters and I’ve got with me Paige Hinkins, who’s a solicitor at Brachers. And she’s going to talk to us today all about bereavement and probate, aren’t you? Yes. I’m Paige I am a solcitor in the Private client team, I’m in our main sub team of wills and probate.

So able to talk about bereavement and the process involved with that. Lovely. I do all the property transfers with Paige and, I’m a paralegal. I actually won the National Paralegal Award last year. And so Paige what is the first step when somebody dies, and you try to sort out their estate, does somebody or one of the executors or somebody contact you.

Yeah. It’s normally a family member that gets in touch first. Most of our inquiries come through on the telephone phone so it will be a case of speaking with someone from our sectoral team. And they would take a few brief details, and then the solicitor would be back in touch. So I would normally call the client personally. I just think it’s helpful to have that, you know, the first contact with someone who is probably going to be taking the matter on.

I find that clients find that really reassuring. And the initial discussions are normally who has passed away. Have you registered death? When there’s a property involved, we normally mention house insurance very early on and say, you know, have you updated the house insurance that the property’s now empty? And we speak to them about the will, if it’s a will prepared by Brachers, we would pull that up from storage.

If it’s a will prepared by somebody else, we’d ask them to come in with the original, Brachers, offer a free 30 minute initial probate meeting. Oh, I didn’t know that. So that’s interesting. So alot of people book in for that. Because, you know, there’s nothing to lose and is worth coming in. And also, it’s nice to speak to a person. So many times you just get to speak to a recorded message.

The personal touch it. I think it goes a long way. Definitely. And so that’s the first few initial bits. And then I book them in to come in for the free 30 minutes. At that point I would look through the will going through it in detail. Talk about the next steps, and then we offer a little, and then we offer a cost estimate for the work involved going forward.

Our fees vary in terms of the complexity involved, but we do do some fixed fee. Oh there is is there. Yeah, some fixed fee applications for the grant of probate is actually quite simple. And then the next step is normally getting values. And again, clients can have different levels of involvement with that. So I have some clients that like to contact the banks and they get all the information and and of course that keeps costs down.

So you want that. So that I have other clients can find it terribly distressing and say can you do it too. Yeah. So we’re able to, you know, adapt our approach and our fee estimates in terms of how much, how much involvement do you want to have. And, you know, are you cost conscious or are you wanting to not have any aggravation and for me to deal with at all.

And, and see what they want. It’s experience. Isn’t it really. It depends how many times they’ve had to do it before. It’s the confidence in being able to, adhere to everything that needs to be done isn’t it really, some people find legal work scary, don’t they? And the long words and the everything, it’s the forms that need to be filled out can be quite confusing.

Yeah. I’ve had so many clients say to me after an initial meeting, business. Goodness I was so nervous coming in, I feel so much better because it can be daunting coming in to see a solicitor. And to be honest, I’ve. I’ve worked with you. I wouldn’t have a clue where to start. This is the thing with the initial call, I try, I, you know, I talk to them a little bit about the process, but I just say you can come in, we will talk you through the steps.

You know, there’s, there’s no fee for that initial meeting. You’ve got nothing to lose. And often clients are reassured and they go away and they have a think about the qoute. And most of the time I get back in touch. Oh that’s nice. Yeah, yeah. So, in terms of your involvement, it would, you know, most probate and bereavements often have a property involved.

They do. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we, we do look at the title fairly early on before you, to see what’s involved. There’s, mostly by the time, probate comes through, there’s generally people don’t have a mortgage on it, they’ve normally paid it off, but sometimes they have mortgages. We have to make sure, are paid off and removed from the title, straightforward title.

So we like to see, but sometimes that can be more complicated if there’s management companies involved and they put restrictions on the titles that we have to adhere to them. Very often we find that there’s people on the title that have died many years ago. And in fact, two matters that I’ve worked with you recently, the property, address on the title, hasn’t been updated.

So the owners had changed the name of the property and the title hadn’t been updated. So that is a litte kink that we have to sort out with the land registry. So it all takes time. And, yes, we have to just make sure that it’s entirely cleared before we sell it. To to a buyer. It’s great to have your involvement early on.

And that’s what’s great about our firm in terms of we’re all on the same floor. You know, I totally agree with you. And I think we do need to complete each phase. And, you know, you’re involved early on, which just means, you know, when when we’ve got the probate and we’re in a position to do that, we, we know if there’s going to be any issues, we deal with them.

We’ve made inquiries, we’ve sorted, you know, things at the land registry that can be sorted, you know, up to an extent. And I think I think that’s the benefit of having, you know, a larger firm that we’ve got a big team. There’s always someone in we have someone. So we’ve got somebody to sort out, help us with the trusts. We’ve got a trust team as well.

It just helps us with the timeline and instead of it being open ended, we can have a timeline, tell clients that’s really helpful. Otherwise it’s sort of floundering and don’t know when things are going to happen and and what you know, when they can finally, you know, put laid to rest. Really. Yeah. Once we’ve got the grante of probate and we’re in the at the stage where we’re kind of cashing in assets, transferring assets, and to have people that work closely together is really beneficial.

It is for us. Yeah. It is. I can say, you know what what stage of the properties are you up to? And I can say, all of you know, I’ve cashed in that and cashed in that I’m having trouble with this institution. How long are you going to be? You know, we can liaise and we can try and make a put it together.

And, you know, that’s right. It does make things much easier, to be able to just call on anybody really. We’ve got the, the dispute team, you know, if the if the will has been being disputed at all, we can refer to the trust team and, and each other aspect, especially as to the way it has.

So there’s always someone that, that you can speak to that’s going to know. And again we’ve got a variety of, expertise and and different levels as well. So there’s always going to be someone that you can speak to and that can help you on your issues. We sure like it don’t we. The thing is we work with individuals and, and and people from all walks of life who may have lots of experience or no experience in property, lots of people, you know, don’t.

I mean, they may have never bought property. You wouldn’t know what to do to do with with one if they were left one in the in a Will, yeah. So, we are always here and I think we always try to give the personal touch. We’re always on the end of the phone, we’re always here, people call into the office without an appointment they often do that.

Yeah they often do. It’s because it’s individuals not businesses. So we treat you like an individual. Yeah. I’ve had lots of, feedback recently actually. That, our reception team are great, you know someone always calls back. I’ve had that on one on my feedback, they’re never grumpy are they, the receptionist are always smiling. Always sunshine and light. And I know, we need that as much as everybody else and we need them to come up to our floor.

Yeah. So is there anything else for them that you would highlight to somebody to look out for when somebody dies? You know, with probate, the thing that everybody seems to, you know, forget or that needs to be done quite urgently is normally the house insurance. And quite a few times when I mentioned that they say goodness, I hadn’t even thought of that.

So you know, that’s something that you need to be, straightaway, you know, make sure that that property is secure. And. Yeah, otherwise, we’re here to help you. Really, you know, I have a client come in with absolutely everything they could possibly need. My goodness you’re so organized, and I have other clients that shop up with nothing, and they go, I have no idea where to start.

And, you know, we’re able to help you wherever you are on that sliding scale. I think maybe you wasn’t particularly close to that person. You wouldn’t know about their bank account their investments or, anything that they particularly, don’t know about the property. Yeah. Because when I’m transferring it, I have to make that clear that the client doesn’t know anything about the property.

So, yeah, definitely. Especially when we’ve got an intestacy, when there’s no will, you know, you do find also that there are there are different searches that you can do. So you can do an asset search, they normally cost around 200 pounds plus VAT. And I’m finding that lots of clients are wanting to do that, just in case something comes up.

You know, there’s, some shares that they didn’t know about, some old account that was closed, but actually, there’s, you know, a couple of hundred still in it. It wasn’t it hasn’t been dealt with. So there’s lots of things that you can do to find out information. And that’s why people call upon our expertise, because we have that wealth of knowledge that we can say, right.

We’re not sure on this. I would recommend we do this search. And this is, you know, the most cost effective way to do it. And we’re able to do it. So how long does probate take? Roughly. So generally people say, a year, but I have been finding that the probate registry really been speeding up recently, especially on, what we call simple probate, if that is such a thing.

When it is a taxable, estate. So, when we’re having to do a full report to HMRC, that it does take a longer time. So, you submit that report to HMRC, you normally wait a couple of months, for the code and then you submit the probate application. At that point their time frame is 16 weeks.

Oh yeah. So I have found that, you know, if it is a spouse exemption. So, you know that person’s partner has passed away. Or if it’s very simple in terms of there’s nothing to report to HMRC and we can just make the probate application straight away. They all come in. You know, they come within a month recently. I’ve had quite a few, that that have been coming through a lot quicker.

But it’s just it is a situation of how long is a piece of string because it depends who picks it up there end. And you know, doing something quick is possibly the wrong word because you need to do it thoroughly, don’t you? Yeah, we are trained to look at, you know, we see where it’s going to be slow.

So we we can anticipate. Right we know that institution type is a nightmare. Let’s get the letters out to them asap, well, we know that institution doesn’t pick it up until you call them. Do we send the letter? We wait two weeks, we call, we start chasing. You know, you pay for that knowledge and that, experience in terms of knowing, you know, what, what needs prodding and what can actually sit there and wait, for example, Department for Work and Pensions, you know, you send it off, you don’t get from them till the end of the probate, when there’s an overpayment, it just sits there and there’s no point chasing.

Because they won’t have picked it up, you know, it’s it’s where our support staff come into their own really. Picking things up and the odds and ends. We have great, great support on that. Yeah. Yeah, that’s really great.

Thanks Paige. So if we’ve got somebody, listening who wants to use our services, they can fill out a form on the website, fill out a form on the website, or just give us a call and we’ll book you in for that free 30 minute initial meeting. Yeah. That’s lovely. Thanks for coming in today. No worries.

Lovely to speak to you.