Appointment of IOU in favour of NRBDT owed by Spouse's Estate Same Beneficiaries

H died in 2015 with NRBDT. Executors/Trustees accepted IOU from surviving spouse and assented assets to spouse. DT Beneficiaries are spouse, children ( who are Trustees) and remoter issue.

Spouse (W) has now died. W’s executors and Trustees are same as H and also residuary beneficiaries.

Trustees of H decided to apply RPI indexation to apply to Loan at time of loan.

W’s House currently not sold and require to be sold to repay loan to Trustees.

Proposed that H’s Trustees waive the RPI Indexation ( trust allows waiver of “interest” - does this include indexation?) and keep loan outstanding on W’s estate, appoint benefit of IOU to son and daughter ( Trust allows to benefit themselves despite being Trustees) .

Then W’s Trustees assent W’s property to son and daughter (Executors and Residuary Beneficiaries of W’s Estate) subject to debt on assumption that the debt is extinguished settled on basis of merger of creditor and debtor. Will it be extinguished or will this fall foul of HMRC?

If not extinguished can it be left son and daughter are debtor and creditor and repay on eventual sale of property so that trust and estate can be wound up? It doesn’t seem right that they can be both creditor and debtor without causing extinguishment?

Currently W’s Executors have reported IOU as liability of W’s Estate. Presume if IOU not repaid then corrective account will need to be submitted as IOU will be disallowed as a liability. Is this correct?

Alternative is H’s trustees waive the loan and RPI Indexation ( assuming Indexation is covered by power to waive “interest”) and then corrective account on W’s estate so not claiming IOU as a liability of the estate.

Hi Jen,

Please see below link regarding deducting liabilities that are not repaid from the estate:

Regarding whether or not the RPI indexation is interest, see the discussion here regarding whether RPI indexation is interest for income tax purposes:

Whilst not directly relevant, it may offer some ideas.

Also see s.381A of the Income Tax (Trading and Other Income) Act 2005 which defines sums equivalent to interest for income tax purposes.

One could argue the fact that, at best for income tax purposes, it falls into a sum equivalent to interest shows it is not really interest.

I also think the fact that, if the will explicitly allows deduction of interest and has a provision charging interest. Then the obvious interpretation is that the clause allowing waiver of interest only applies to interest so called in the will. You may also want to check whether the will allows for partial repayment.

Yours,
The Legal Beagle