Hayley and the rest of the team (Sarah Dede, Joanna Lando and Denise Michael) will deal with your matter: Hayley Bholah is Head of Private Clients with over 10 years of experience dealing with Estate Administrations, member of the Society of Trusts and Estates Practitioners and Solicitors for the Elderly.
Our charges will be calculated according to the time spent dealing with the estate (which will include meetings with you and perhaps others; considering, preparing and working on papers; correspondence; and making and receiving telephone calls), together with a value element.
These charging rates are reviewed annually and we will notify you in writing of any increased rate.
Hayley Bholah’s hourly charging rate is £275 plus VAT (£55), Sarah Dede`s hourly charging rate is £230 plus VAT (£46) and any other work (e.g. visiting/clearing property and other work not requiring legal training) carried out by other members of the firm will be charged at £150 + VAT. (£30) The time taken will be recorded in units of 6 minutes (1/10th of an hour) and routine correspondence sent or received and routine telephone calls made or received will be charged at a minimum of one such unit. The above rates are subject to change but we will always notify you first in writing. In addition to the above hourly charging rate we also charge a value element as follows:-
Solicitor acting as agent for executor/administrator
Value of Gross estate less residence 1% Value of residence 0.5%
Solicitor acting as executor
Value of Gross estate less residence 1.5% Value of residence 0.75%
I envisage that the non-value element of the fees will be within the following ranges depending on what work is required:
Small estate, no inheritance tax payable, no Grant of Representation required – below £4,000.
Medium Estate, no inheritance tax payable, Grant of Representation required – between £3,000 and £7,000.
Larger estate, full inheritance tax account to prepare, Grant of Representation required – between £6,000 and £10,000.
There are a number of other factors unique to a particular matter that may increase the above estimated costs further including whether the Estate passes under the intestacy rules, if there are large numbers of beneficiaries, if there are missing beneficiaries, if there are any claims on the estate or there are problematic beneficiaries or if there are international assets/beneficiaries.
These estimates exclude VAT and disbursements. These estimates are our best estimate that we can make and are not intended to be fixed. If they need to be changed due to unforeseen developments and/or complications then we will advise you of any revised estimates as the matter develops.
If this firm does not complete the work, we will charge you for the work we have done; our bill will also include VAT and expenses.
We will always be glad to discuss fees with you and provide at any stage a cash account giving details of all money handled on your behalf and the state of the ledger at any given time.
We set out below other things, aside from our costs, which you are likely to have to pay for. These are very often payable from the estate, but if there are no funds in the estate, you may initially be asked to pay these to be reimbursed when there are monies in the estate.
Expense
When payment is likely to be needed
Cost £
Probate Court fees
On application for Grant of Probate
£273 plus £1.50p per certified copy
Valuation fees
Required to assess the size of the estate to obtain Grant of Probate
Variable
Normal time scales
A typical estate usually takes 1.5 – 2 years to complete.
Once we receive the completed Probate Questionnaire back from you it normally takes 2-3 months to review this and obtain information and valuations required to complete the Probate documentation for the signature of the executors.
When the documentation is received back from you we will submit the full inheritance tax form and if applicable, pay any inheritance tax to HM Revenue & Customs (this can take a few weeks depending on how quickly funds are released to pay the inheritance tax).
We must wait 20 working days after submission of the full inheritance tax account before we can then submit the application to the Probate Registry. The Probate Registry’s current timescales are 16 weeks to process the application and issue the Grant.
Once we have the Grant of Probate we would expect it to take another 2 – 3 months to realise or to transfer the assets, longer if there is a property to sell or there are foreign assets etc. In some cases we may then be in a position to make an interim distribution.
The matters that need to be dealt with at the end of the administration of an estate are with HMRC to obtain clearance for inheritance tax and income tax, typically it takes HMRC 8-10 weeks to deal with this correspondence. A final distribution would be made on completion of all the outstanding issues.