[Tech1] Estates, Wills, Probate, etc.

[Chris Woolf]

You are quite right - the whole inheritance tax business is a mess. As 
has been frequently said, if you are wealthy, healthy and have a good 
tax adviser you don't pay it at all. If you own any property and have 
little understanding of finance, your heirs get caned.

I'm not against the idea of a wealth tax but it does need to be a lot 
better organised than it is now.

I think a great many elderly people see cash in a bank account, and 
maximum equity in their property as something desirable - it has been 
for most of their life. But during the last seven  years (who knows when 
they will start?) the desirability reverses completely. So hard to 
suddenly change your position at a late stage in life, and also (often) 
a need to put your trust in children, friends, legal systems etc to keep 
some sort of safety net in case you need expensive care.

It all needs to be changed, but you (plurally) have to implement that 
change at elections.

Chris Woolf


On 06/06/2023 12:02, Nick Ware via Tech1 wrote:
> I’m re-posting the following because something caused the text of the 
> whole conversation to shrink into micro-font (as it came back my iPad).
> N.
> Nick Ware - sent from my iPad
>
>> On 5 Jun 2023, at 22:19, Nick Ware via Tech1 <tech1 at tech-ops.co.uk> 
>> wrote:
>>
>>  Something for all to consider:
>> If you have a significant Estate and/or things of value to leave to 
>> your beneficiaries, get proper advice and place as much as you can 
>> outside your Estate now.
>> My wife and her two sisters were joint beneficiaries to the Estate of 
>> a childless uncle and aunt. Because they stubbornly refused to do the 
>> right thing, the Probate process took 24 months, and the death duty 
>> jointly paid by the sisters amounted to just under £500,000. And that 
>> Death Duty had to be paid /*before*/ Probate could be granted. Things 
>> were further complicated by the fact that they died only three days 
>> apart, meaning that two separate Probate applications had to be made, 
>> and two sets of legal fees.
>> The immoral thing was that said uncle and aunt had paid Income Tax on 
>> every penny of what they had to leave in their Wills. And, their 
>> (unoccupied) house couldn’t be sold until after Probate, yet the 
>> local Council still required Council Tax to be paid for the whole of 
>> the 24 months!
>> N.
>> Nick Ware - sent from my iPad
>
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