Sadly, my mother passed away a few days ago. My father passed away a few years ago and left everything to my mother.
In her will, my mother appointed me as the sole Executor and Trustee. She didn’t have a lot, and she owned the house she lived in (no mortgage) and it doesn’t incur inheritance tax, and she had about £2000 worth of savings.
How do I go about transferring the house to my name?
Is it really necessary to apply for probate (with a rip-off £300 fee).
Is there anything else to consider?
My brother and sister are happy for this to happen.
As a private individual (i.e. not a professional or a company), can I pay the AP1 form fee (and any other fees) online?
The Land Registry will need the grant of probate, dad’s death certificate (unless his name has been removed already) and a completed AS1. If there is also a Form A Restriction on the title, you will also need to do an RX3 and ST5.
All of this will need to be submitted with an AP1.
Are you wishing to transfer into your name for the purposes of administering the estate or are you the beneficiary to whom the house is gifted in the will? You do not necessarily need to transfer into your name if the former as long as you get probate.
This is not a forum for free advice for lay people. It is for professionals with queries on thorny issues. I am curious as to which professional firm you said you worked for as required when you signed up for this forum.
I suggest you take paid for appropriate professional advice from a local solicitors firm who do probate/property. I would have thought it worth paying a relatively small fee to make sure everything is done as it should be for the house you have inherited.
When I was in practice some seeking my advice seemed not to value it while cheerfully spending thousands on foreign holidays, a conservatory, dentistry or a new carpet or sofa. They were fully entitled to their priorities just as I was fully entitled to show them the door, and did. My arrangements with my clients, whom I was lucky though at some personal cost to be able to select by my sole decision, were that (a) I sent them bills and (b) they paid. One deviation and, hey presto, an ex client! Other advisers were available.
By the same token if I fill a basket at a Supermarket I do not arrive at the till expecting to complain about the prices, or haggle, or ask for time to pay. Nor do I shoplift though I understand it is virtually compulsory nowadays in this island of strangers.
I am more than happy for shameless freebie hunters and cheapskates to Google their advice, get it from ChatbotGPT or blag it on here and then synthesise it into a plan of action. If it goes mammary glands up, some professional somewhere will earn a fee from sorting out, if that even remains a possiblity. Kerching! Kerching!
Sara is usually in just before me on these occasions. I hesitate to burden the moderators with onerous screening duties but I suspect that new subscribers simply do not read the rules. They should be made to specifically sign agreement to them before they are allowed to post. I also find it disturbing that Google gives universal access to posts of mine that were made here subject to those rules, the most important of which to me is a disclaimer of liability for giving advice.
I too am concerned by the fact that members of the public seem to think that the TDF is a forum for obtaining free advice.
Although I have replied to various posts, in the last year or so I have not been able to post any queries of my own. For several years I posted queries regularly but there must have been some change in the system, as I am no longer able to do so. It is particularly irritating to see posts from lay people looking for free advice when, as a solicitor, I am unable to post a query.
If the moderators see this, please would somebody contact me to let me know how I can post a query. Thank you.
It doesn’t help when some forum members, doubtless with the best will in the world (no pun intended), start answering questions from members of the public, rather than gently pointing out the rules of the forum - clearly stated at the top of the page.
It is not always easy to distinguish the not self-evidently clueless lay posters from those practitioners who are not expert in our particular fields or simply not very experienced in them yet. I answered very recently a trainee who stated he was being supervised. Surely good for him to post rather than have to ask his boss to.
Practitioners in other fields altogether can learn from us, perhaps to save their clients from the disaster of dodgy marketed schemes. I have in mind IFAs whose moniker I cruelly quip stands for “I know f… a….” because the worst of them will not stay in lane and are enamoured of “pile it high and sell it cheap”.
My own financial healthcare provider is one of the brilliant type thereof and recently confided to me IHT planning being done by some of his other patients. Yesterday I spent 5 hours researching and writing to him a 6 page surgical critique, out of courtesy to him and my own satisfaction, broadly approving the technical points, war-gaming the risks and explaining why it would not be a game-changer for me. I would not wish such as he to be excluded from the Forum.
Some lay members of it who do not post clearly use the Forum answers as a beauty parade, judging from the regular requests I receive for direct help. Given my marmite qualities as an adviser they do not know how lucky they are that I can now only act for myself, friends and family pro bono (who know my wine and single malt preferences) on pain of the criminal law given that I have escaped with my sanity intact from the AML hostage-takers. I rejoice that not being in business I will not have to register as a tax adviser with the control freak coercive Enemy from the Lubyanka on the Strand WC2R 1LB. Other registration agencies will not be available.
When answering any query I am conscious that it may be of use to members other than the even obviously lay questioner; that extends to those original lay posters who often entertain us with fact-starvation and stunningly inept technical exegeses. I complain, as kindly as I can ever manage, partly pour encourager les autres on this Forum who should really know better.
Perhaps the solution is to allow all to view but not everyone to post. In all this we must bear in mind that those who moderate us are presumably acting pro bono ( I have not sent them any wine or scotch) and it would be unfair to burden them unduly with a task more onerous than it is for my younger sister who is unpaid admin of a Facebook fan club for ancient exponents of a particular species of Noise I do not recognise as “music” (so not Sibelius or Shostakovich nor even Boulez or Saariaho)
To whom are you addressing your query? Everyone has different hourly rates.
I note on your TDF profile your firm is shown as “Nodothat”. So it seems you are not a trust professional. Or did you simply wish to hide your firm as well as your name?
Is someone extracting the urine? Moderators please, please get a grip and stop those who think this Forum is Check-a-Trade.
Meanwhile, go for it every time Sara Spencer and I will join you.
One day some ingenue or freebie bludger is going to synthesise content here into disastrous action and blame it on one or more contributors. This is why after long enduring Big Firm slavery I refused to advise sports stars and entertainers at any price; they can afford to shop for advice at several places but then often mix and match all that good advice received into a phantasmagorical all day dog’s breakfast.