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Where Taxpayers and Advisers Meet

Declaring property in Probate

Akerman
Posts:2
Joined:Wed Mar 24, 2021 5:59 pm
Declaring property in Probate

Postby Akerman » Wed Mar 24, 2021 6:22 pm

Hi there,

I'm a former beneficiary and I would like to ask a question about declaring property in Probate.

Having looked at the estate and Land Registry fillings I've noticed the following:

The Grant of Probate is a total of £580,000

The will shows around £345,000 to distributed to beneficiaries.

The house ( £450,000 to £475,000 in value) wasn't sold but instead transferred to the spouce who wasn't a joint owner. This was roughly two years after the release of the estate in the financial year 2016.

From my view as a layperson, it looks as though assets may have been left undeclared, but I understand that tax law is extremely complex. Is there a way in which this could be above board?

AGoodman
Posts:1738
Joined:Fri May 16, 2014 3:47 pm

Re: Declaring property in Probate

Postby AGoodman » Fri Mar 26, 2021 4:49 pm

The will does not list the value of the assets. It may contain some fixed sum legacies (e.g. £10,000 to person A or £325,000 to person B/a trust) but this is not intended to be exhaustive. The rest of the estate falls under residue - in this case presumably to the spouse.

There's nothing out of the ordinary in what you have said.

It would only be odd if £345,000 was actually paid out in cash in addition to the property, suggesting total assets of £795k. I suspect a substantial part of that was actually met by the value of the house.

Akerman
Posts:2
Joined:Wed Mar 24, 2021 5:59 pm

Re: Declaring property in Probate

Postby Akerman » Fri Mar 26, 2021 6:15 pm

Hi thank you for responding.

I'm a bit confused because property was never sold, and the £345,000 was distributed in cash.

Is there another way an Executor would have been able to extract the value from the property and distribute to beneficiaries?

AGoodman
Posts:1738
Joined:Fri May 16, 2014 3:47 pm

Re: Declaring property in Probate

Postby AGoodman » Tue Mar 30, 2021 11:10 am

Then that is a little odd. Could the property have been sold (at least in part) to the executor - bringing more cash into the estate?

Also bear in mind that the figure on the probate is only the value of assets situated in the UK and does not include any jointly owned assets


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