We are preparing a new Will for a client who is undertaking probate herself in her late father’s estate.
The value of the estate is well under the £500k limit for IHT but the RNRB is required, so she is rendering a full IHT account to HMRC.
The question is whether she has to wait for a code from HMRC before applying for probate although there is no IHT due, will HMRC still have to issue a code first?
Hi Paul
I would ask why, if she doesn’t want to pay you to do the probate and everything else that goes with administering an estate (including admin period tax), are you spending your time on this? If she thinks she is up to doing probate without making a complete hash of it then let her do it. Having to deal with queries like this might make her appreciate professional services a bit more.
Sara
Sara Spencer ATII TEP | Trust Manager
Sara Spencer Ltd, 8 Kingsway, Harrogate, HG1 5NQ
07952 651881 | 01423 524114
Sara.spencer@trustandestate.co.uk
Privacy Notice - details of our legal basis for processing your information, retention period for data held, security of your data, your rights under the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) including the right to complain can be found in our full Privacy notice
This email and the information contained in it and in any attachments are confidential and may be privileged. If you have received this email in error please notify us immediately. If you are not the intended recipient, you are not authorized to, and must not use, disclose, copy, distribute, retain or rely on this email or any part of it.
Please note that whilst we try to ensure that attachments are virus-free, we cannot accept responsibility for situations where this is not the case.
Any information in this email is advice from the business and not the sender.
Sara Spencer Ltd is a company registered in England, registration number 12304408, registered office 8 Kingsway, Harrogate, HG1 5NQ
Thanks Sarah.
We’re doing a new Will for her and she asked me the question in passing. I wasn’t 100% sure of the answer.
The answer is yes, she has to wait for the Code, payment of IHT or not is irrelevant. Though I echo Sara’s post as the client seems to have fallen into the common trap that Probate is Estate Administration.
Just to echo this, we had a similar situation which was slightly further advanced, in that the client had applied for probate and the probate registry had stopped the case having seen the value was in excess of £325,000 and then requested the HMRC code. The client then came to us to do the IHT400 and we then submitted the clearance letter to the probate office.