Hi All
I have been approached about an intestate estate where the deceased died in 2003. There were a number of debts in the estate and the assets were mainly life policies and creative rights. The bank took all bar one of the life policies to pay some of the debt to them. There is left unadministered a life policy (£79k @ DOD) and the royalties from the deceased’s creative career. It is proving hard for my client to obtain the information from ITV and some other rights users. It is not thought to be a huge value.
There are four step-children from the deceased’s previous relationships, one of whom is a nasty piece of work whom my client is nervous of. He allegedly helped with administration of the estate when my client wasn’t in the right place emotionally to do so.
I have just learnt that it is the date of appropriation that matters and not the date of death values.
Presumably the life assurance policy is the cash value and so the date of death value goes towards the statutory legacy – the accrued interest shouldn’t count towards 125k. Where do we stand on the income on the rights. One company said they were only able to go back 6 years presumably for the same reason that the deceased’s other liabilities would be statute barred as it is more than 6 years since he died.
(1) Do I just need to include the current live assets in the probate application? A multiple of the income from the rights at value 20 years ago and the life policy?
(2) How do I work out the value of the assets for the statutory legacy (£125k)? The life policy and unpaid income and a multiple of the income of the rights?
Miriam