Key Stages
Once you have confirmed that you would like to instruct Wills & Probate Solutions Ltd to act on your behalf to obtain the necessary Grant, we will send you our client care letter, together with various forms for you to complete and return.
The client care letter confirms that Marrianne and Wills & Probate Solutions Ltd are authorised to undertake this Reserved Activity under the Legal Services Act 2007 and that both are regulated by CILEx (Chartered Institute of Legal Executives).
A lot of information is required in order to apply for the Grant and we cannot submit the application until all the information has been received.
Within one week of receiving the completed paperwork back from you, we will advise if any further information is required before providing a draft Estate Valuation outlining the assets and liabilities held by the deceased at the date of death. You will need to let us know if anything is missing!
Everybody currently has a Nil Rate Band of £325,000 and anything below this is an “Excepted Estate”. An additional exemption is the Residence Nil Rate Band which is currently £175,000 per person. This potentially means that for a married couple, there is an exempt pot of up to £1m before any Inheritance Tax is due.
If there is a tax liability, or the Residence Nil Rate Band exemption is required, then the full HMRC account will need to be prepared. Where there is a tax liability, we will obtain the reference number from HMRC which needs to be quoted on the full account.
Once the draft valuation has been approved, we will then prepare the IHT400 account, together with the necessary schedules. We will send you the IHT400 to approve and once you have done this, if there is a tax liability and there are accounts where the liability can be paid from, we will send you the IHT Direct Payment scheme form to sign so that it can be sent to the relevant institutions to pay the tax. The tax needs to be paid within 6 months after the month of the date of death before interest is applied to the full amount.
At this stage, we will bill for you for 50% of our fixed fee and when settled and once we have received the Direct Payment scheme form(s), we will submit these to the relevant institutions and send the HMRC paperwork to them.
HMRC advise that they will issue the information needed to obtain the Grant within 5 weeks of receipt.
As soon as the information has been received from HMRC, we will draft the Legal Statement through the HMCTS Portal. The draft statement will be sent to you for approval within one week of receiving the information from HMRC.
Once you have approved the Legal Statement, everybody named will need to sign it and we will arrange for this to be circulated.
At this stage, we will bill you for the final 50% of our fixed fee and ask you to confirm how many copies of the Grant you would like (£16 each). This, together with the Probate Registry fee for the Grant (£300) is also requested.
As soon as we have received the signed statement, the original Will (if any) and any other required documents; our bill has been paid and we have received the Probate Registry fee and monies for the Grant(s) we will complete the application for the Grant. Within one working day of doing this, we will send the necessary paperwork to the Probate Registry by Recorded Delivery.
The Probate Registry will acknowledge receipt of the original documents by email and the Grants will be issued – either within 20 minutes or 12 weeks. They generally turn the applications around within two weeks.
Once the Grants have been received, we will post these to you, together with any other documents that we are holding within one week of receipt and by Recorded Delivery.
Service Information
For an Excepted Estate: £1495 + £300 Probate Registry fee + £16 / copy Grant = £1811 (for one copy)
For an HMRC required Estate: £1995 + £300 Probate Registry fee + £16 / copy of the Grant = £2311 (for one copy of the Grant)