Executors And Probate Help Needed Please

[slyvixen]

my mother died in dec.my sister is 1st executor,my brother is second executor and i am 3rd.luckily the house is council owned luckily.my brother has right of accession to the tenancy so the council will rehouse him to a smaller property soon.because he had to pay the rent on the house to the council(we refused to pay the rent out of mums estate)my brother quickly refused us entry into what was my mums house claiming the majority of mums belongings as his and has decided what he is going to give away to charity or wherever without our permission or consent.there is still things we both want in there.occasionally he offers us access (separately naturally)but then uses some excuse to refuse.there is an insurance form that needs to be filled in so it can be paid out.the first form he got my sister to post through the letterbox but then did not sign.he does not communicate unless he wants something.we have had to get a 2nd form and order a replacement birth certificate for him(he told my sister only recently about this).now we have to wait for him to sign this one.he is full of demands.my sister had to get an overdraft of £500 to pay for my mums 'wake'.he wanted her to pay £60 to hire a room for 4 hours and to have £300 behind the bar.which was ridiculous.my sister and i decided to have it in a local bar with each of us having £50.we considered it fair for all.most of my mums funeral was paid out of her bank account but the remainder £860 we had to lend off a family member(he wishes to remain anonomous due to our brothers behaviour he is disgusted with him).my sister is now living off her overdraft because of this).we spoke to the solicitor dealing with our mums estate and she said we could not force mums estate into probate as we would need our brothers permission to do this anyway..my sister opened up an executors account in her and our brothers name so the insurance could be paid there.my sister thinks our brother wants to see her in debt(highly likely as he is a nasty piece of work).what can we do if our brother continues to refuse to sign or takes the paperwork again.he has taken everything our sister has had to do as 1st executor personally but if we waited for him to do it we'd still be waiting.i feel very angry with him as he has taken everything and left us nothing.we wanted to do things fairly.our brother has always felt self entitled because he is a male.even if he signs the form and put the money in the account i believe there will be on going problems(so expect more help messages lol)

[Buenchico]

Can we start by getting a few more details please?

You refer to 'executors' but you've made no reference to your mother leaving a will. Further, while a will can name 'reserve' executors (in case an executor is unable to act, or simply doesn't want to do so) there are no such people as 'first', 'second' or 'third' executors'; they're all equal.

If your mother left a will we need to know its provisions, who was appointed as executor(s) and whether probate has yet been sought or obtained (through an application to the Probate Registry).

If your mother didn't leave a will then the laws relating to intestacy apply and here estate MUST be distributed in accordance with this flow chart (where 'you' refers to your mother):
http://www.tollers.co.uk/system/docs/178/original/Rules%20of%20Intestacy%20Flowchart.pdf
Under such circumstances there is no 'probate' and no 'executors'. If your mother's estate (including, for example, the insurance) was valued at over £5000 then the relevant people (which appears to be you and your siblings) MUST apply for 'letters of administration'. Once the grant has been received, you'll all be 'administrators', not 'executors' and (again) there will be no '1st', '2nd', '3rd'; you'll all have joint powers.

Where letters of administration are required (because the estate is valued at over £5000), banks and insurers can't hand over the funds until such time as the grant of administration has been obtained.

Where letters of administration are not required (because of the low value of the estate), banks and insurers MAY release the funds to those who are administering the estate (which would still be you and your siblings, with JOINT rights - NOT '1st', '2nd', '3rd'!) but they can also still insist that letters of administration are obtained first.

I was going to write more but I've realised that there's little point in going further until we know whether there was a will and, if so, what it actually said. If there's no will, is the estate valued at more or less than £5000?

Chris

[factor-fiction]

I find this very difficult to follow, slyvixen, but after reading it a few times I think i follow most of it but I I may have misunderstood some aspects too, so I apologise if the following response doesn't make sense.

I agree that we need more information on the points raised by Buenchico.

I thought initially this was about one executor not involving the others and not fulfilling the role properly.

But I was then puzzled by the line "we spoke to the solicitor dealing with our mums estate and she said ..."

What is the solicitor's role? Is the solicitor also an executor? If not, who appointed her?

If you post again, can I suggest you break it down into sentences and paragraphs as it'll be easier for us to follow. Also it's probably better to stick to the facts rather than throw in comments such as "he's a nasty piece of work"

There are people on here who can give good advice on these matters if we understand them. Good luck

[slyvixen]

there is a will basically it said everything was to be shared equally (ie everything she owned and insurance money and everything in her bank account).the house is council owned thankfully.mostly its about getting aviva to pay out who can't do this without us all filling in this form.all the money in her bank account paid for about 3/4 of the funeral costs.the estate is just over £3000(excluding items in the house which would add another £1000 approx.when my sister (reluctantly) posted the 1st aviva form through the letterbox he stopped answers messages from my sister.we contacted CAB for advice who sent us to age concern.we saw a solicitor there who said about forcing the estate into probate as a possible solution.we started to consider this as a viable option.about a week later he offered us to go into the house separately of course so we could choose what we want but never contacted us again so i texted him to try get a time/date to do this,plus to try to persuade to to start talking to sort it out.i thought maybe his starting to be reasonable so we wouldn't need to try probate (this was one thing of the things we wanted ti discuss).he eventually texted back asking me if my sister and were going to probate.he then insulted me by text to which my reply was if he gave or sold anything in what was mums home we would charge him for it.trying to talk to him is like talking to a brick wall.we then got an appointment with the solicitor who dealt with mums will(she is not an executor or an administrator) who told us we would need our brother to agree for it to go to probate anyway.so we contacted him and told him we were advised to have 1 last shot at trying it sort this amiacably before probate (what he doesn't know can't hurt us lol).to which he told my sister he couldn't find his birth certificate.we always told him to let us know if there were any problems but he doesn't communicate unless he wants something.we have now ordered a copy (which makes my sister deeper in debt) and are waiting for him to get back to my sister about meeting up to sign the paperwork.we are back to square one.he doesn't answer messages very often and regularly backs down from anything he has said.the executors bank account (set up for the aviva payout) is in both my sisters name and his.i knew we would get problems even before the account was set up but the bank manager who dealt with this seemed to imply this is the only way it could be set up.shortly the council will re-house him and all of our mums possessions will be gone with him claiming everything he wants as his regardless of whether anybody else wants them or not and him throwing or giving everything else to charity without us agreeing to it.there is lots he is not returning which could go to auction to be sold for the benefit of us all but i believe he intends to keep them to sell himself.the day after she died he was in her room smashing glass and planning on taking everything to the dump.we managed to save a few personnel items we had given to her previously.to be honest my sister and i did go in there (and the living room) on the day she died looking for any of the insurance paperwork.we found this the following day so my sister started the process of informing everyone which our brother seems to have taken exception to.thanks for any and all help

[slyvixen]

ps sorry about the personnel remarks it upsets me to see my sister upset and to see what this is doing to her.i will try my best to behave in future thanks again

[factor-fiction]

I'll read through later (got to do the cooking now) but at first glance I think your post is still difficult to follow. As I suggested earlier it's better to leave gaps between sentences and split the text into paragraphs

[tamborine]

please please me oh yeh like I please you

[tamborine]

ooops wrong thread, sorry

[bednobs]

my advice would be to forget everything that was in your mum's home - it sounds incredibly unlikely you will get anything back (it will either be sold or given away i guess). There doesn't seem to be anything majorly valuable (you estmate the value of all her posessions at around £1000) if there is anything of sentimental value, you could ask your brother, bu it sounds like you have no hope of recovering anything. In the grand scheme of things £1000 isn't a huge extra amount for your brother to get, bearing in mind he'll have to go to the bother of selling stuff etc.

[slyvixen]

thank you mark. enjoy dinner . i will try to set it out better in future. unfortunately everything is trying to get out at once :-)

[slyvixen]

i'm not too worried about the possessions its just annoying. it's mainly what can we do if he still refuses to sign the paperwork or is unreachable. the remainder of the funeral still needs to be paid back to our uncle (who wishes to remain anon) . plus the bills that my mum owes needs to be paid. there's not a lot of money in the estate and he has tried to force us to make us pay most of it to him (by trying to include his bills in the estate and trying to make us pay inflated removal costs etc etc ) because we refuse he won't sign or won't answer messages. we let him choose time/date/place but we are still waiting. what can we do if he doesn't sign please . many thanks again