How to do DIY Probate
Researching “How to do DIY Probate”? You’re not alone.
Many thousands of UK citizens have started looking for the same thing after being quoted astronomical sums from solicitors to complete probate.
The overcharging of probate is a real problem – grief-stricken, bereaved people are being given the difficult choice of whether to fork over huge amounts of money to the legal profession (£10,000 – £20,000 bills are not unusual), or to go it alone and risk getting it wrong, being fined by HMRC and encountering even more stress and difficulty.
But if you are concerned about going it alone, then you need not fear.
The truth is that probate is actually fairly straightforward – most estates are fairly easy to deal with; you’ll just need to be able to fill in quite a lot of paperwork, most of it fairly simple.
It’s also highly likely that you’ll also complete it quicker than a solicitor – we’ve seen countless examples of solicitors taking six months (and longer) to complete the whole process, which really is a remarkably long time given how simple the process is.
It’s also precisely what you don’t want – losing someone you love is hard enough, without having the whole process dragging on far longer than necessary.
As a result, there’s been a significant increase in the number of people researching how to do DIY probate themselves.
How to do DIY Probate: the honest truth
Probate can be simple, stress-free and straightforward, as long as you get the guidance you need on these three things:
- What needs to happen and what you need to before you begin the process applying for probate.
- How to source the correct forms and paperwork and fill them in correctly
- The final steps you need to take to close the estate
DIY Probate – the key steps
In most probate cases, here are the key things you’ll need to do:
- Register the death
- Retrieve the will (if there is one)
- Deal with inheritance tax
- Apply for probate
- Close accounts and inform organisations
- Pay any debts
- Claim on life insurance
- Value the estate
- Distribute the remaining assets
That’s it. No more, no less. If you feel like you’re able to do those tasks yourself, with a helping hand along the way, there’s no good reason why you can’t do DIY probate.
But here’s an important point – just because you decide to do DIY probate, it doesn’t mean that you have to be left to your own devices, forced to do hours of research and still wracked with the worry over what would happen if you got something wrong.
A long time ago now, we realised that there were a lot of people crying out for help to get the probate process completed themselves, so we created a DIY Probate Checklist outlining all of the steps in the DIY Probate process.