Transcript:

One thing I didn’t have to do for Mum, but I feel is still important to mention, is the “Tell Us Once” service offered by the Government.

To quote the Government’s website, which I will be doing for much of this episode: “Tell Us Once is a service that lets you report a death to most government organisations in one go.”

This saves the bereaved a lot of heartache and grief by just informing the authorities once and take it from me, you never get used to the fact that you have to tell people a loved one has died.

It’s a simple, effective and brilliant innovation and I will leave a link in the show notes, but to briefly summarise...

• The Tell Us Once service applies if the person who has died lived in England, Scotland or Wales.
  • Please note, holiday and business trips abroad are still covered.
  • The death must have been registered before the service can be used. And the Registrar will notify you of the service; and may help you complete the form or issue a unique number so you can use the service yourself; by telephone or online. If you do choose to do it yourself both Hearing and Sign Impaired facilities are available and you must use the service within 28 days of the reference number being issued.
• The “Tell Us Once” service requires the following information about the deceased:
  • Name
  • The date they died
  • Their National Insurance Number
  • Name, address and contact details of the person or company dealing with their estate. In other words, their “executor”
  • If there’s a surviving spouse or civil partner, their name, address, telephone number and the National Insurance number or date of birth of the spouse or civil partner.
    • Or the same information for the Next Of Kin.
  • If they died in a hospital, nursing home, care home or hospice, the name and address of that institution
• You may also need:
  • Passport, their passport number and town of birth
  • Their driving licence number and vehicle registration if they owned one
  • The name of their local council and which, if any, services they were receiving such as Housing Benefit
  • If they had a Blue Badge, and their Blue Badge number
  • List of any benefits they were receiving; such as Tax credits, State Pensions, etc

A note on the National Insurance number. While the website states it’s not mandatory my Dad had to supply it. It also makes the process much quicker as this is the one unique reference that is common to all systems.

It is also worth pulling all this information together before you either see the Registrar or make the call.

And please bear in mind I have paraphrased, the Government webpage goes into more detail.

Once you have notified the “Tell Us Once” service, the following will be notified:

• HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) - to deal with personal tax and to cancel benefits and credits
• Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) - to cancel benefits and entitlements, for example Universal Credit or State provided Pensions
• Passport Office - to cancel their passport
• Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) - to cancel a licence, remove the person as the keeper of up to 5 vehicles and end the vehicle tax registered in their name
• The local council - to cancel:
  • Housing Benefit
  • Council Tax Reduction/Support
  • Blue Badge
  • Inform council housing services, and
  • Remove the person from the electoral register

It’s worth noting that although all the above are automatic, it’s not instantaneous the moment you complete the process. And it will still result in one or many of the above departments contacting you, so be mindful of the post. Especially if you have been unable to supply an NI number.

There are also things the “Tell Us Once” service cannot do. These the Executor must inform and they include:

• Banks and Building Societies
• Mortgage providers
• Insurance providers
• Companies that the person had contracts with, like utility companies, landlords or housing associations
• Personal or workplace pension schemes, unless they’re one of the public sector pension schemes that “Tell Us Once” contacts
• Doctors, Pharmacists, Dentists and Opticians; to ensure prescriptions stop

You may also need to:

• Update property records
• Contact DVLA if the deceased owned a vehicle so it can be transferred or sold.
• Contact HMRC if the deceased ran a business or had a Student Loan.

And in case you declined to go down the “Tell Us Once” route, or you missed the 28 day deadline, I’ve placed a separate link in the show notes.

One thing the “Tell Us All” service will not do, is act as Executor. An executor is usually someone who is named in the will as responsible for dealing with the deceased’s estate. It is often a family member, or members. Or a solicitor. Or in the case of Mum, all of the above. They must apply for probate and deal with the deceased estate.

“Nothing is certain except death and taxes”. That’s the famous quote by American President Benjamin Franklin, way back in 1789. There’s a postscript to that by Kevin Galang, also of America, who says “Death, Taxes and learning new things”.

Why the quote and it’s amendment? This was the first time I’d ever been an Executor of someone’s estate, along with my Sister and Dad.

Now, we could just have handed it all over to the solicitor, but Mum’s estate was small and relatively simple. Unfortunately solicitor fee system was equally simple; just the Basics or the Full Package. With the cost of the latter prohibitively high.

Now just to be clear, this is a reflection on the legal profession,rather than the solicitor and the firm he belonged to. He was great in every regard, but for my Sister and I we felt the Full Package cost was a bit over the top.

We both held positions of responsibility, were used to dealing with budgets and monies and Mum’s affairs were tidy. So we thought, “how hard could it be to close down a few small bank accounts, a smattering of Premium Bonds and cash-in those free-to-account-holder shares I think most people have kicking about in their bottom drawer?”

Actually, we had no idea.

To answer the question of which Package to go with my Sister and I decided to test the waters at the nearest Bank – the Halifax.

Popping in, it took us all of five minutes to formally notify them that Mum had died, put a “Stop” on her accounts and advise them that we were Mum’s Executors.

And as the young lady made notes on her electronic pad, went away to print them for us to sign, my Sister and I looked at each other thinking “that was easy!”.

If everything was that straight forward no way were we paying for the Full Package. We could do it ourselves.

Addendum, I was doing it. My Sister had just started a new job and had a busy six months ahead of her organizing events and shows, so I took the lead. After all my day-job was Finance and although this would be new territory the backbone was still numbers and systems.

I’ll summarize here how easy it is, once you know. The key, as ever, is to talk to the professionals if you can, as they often have departments. I might be doing this for the first time, but they do it every day.

The Banks were easy. Death certificate plus details, my ID - done.

The Premium Bonds required a sealed Probate certificate and the waiting time for that was six months. So I prepped what I could and parked it.

Shares likewise; I called Equiniti and they were great. Again I needed to wait for Probate but I set everything in motion and wrote down in big letters my plan of action for six months time; namely transfer them all to me and then I was to sell them because the fee that way was so much cheaper than selling via Mum’s Estate. If we’d have chosen the expensive route the shares were so few it might not have been worth doing at all.

So far, so good.

I was also fortunate to already have an Equiniti account, courtesy of the free shares Lloyds gave out when they bought the Halifax. I’d set it up, more out of interest than the desire to dabble on the stocks and shares market, but it was proving advantageous now. And from memory it wasn’t hard to do, after all, I already had shares, all I had to do was use the reference numbers on the paperwork.

But setting up a joint bank account for me and my Sister proved extraordinarily difficult, namely because we lived two hundred miles apart. Online for a high-street bank would only work by us going into the same branch, even with Lloyds, with whom we both banked unless we made an appointment. And as we didn’t already bank with any of the other banks they were no-go areas.

So I set about looking at online-only banks, or at least the one’s I’d heard of and were happy with. But they either required both of us to physical turn up at an affiliated branch, or once they learnt it was to act as an Executor Account quickly said “no”; it was for personal accounts only.

I was stumped. I know I could have just set one up in my name alone, but that felt a bit controlling and would have got very messy if something happened to me.

Then just when I was bemoaning the lack of twenty-first century thinking I heard from a Cashier at Lloyds that they now did Joint Accounts that you could set up online and also verify online! We had it made.

Later that week we synchronized our watches, logged on and in less than ten minutes later we had a joint bank account. So top tip, if you are going to need a joint bank account, plan ahead.

Now all I had to do was re-visit the banks we’d notified and very carefully give them the new joint bank account details.

Then sit tight for another four and a half months until probate came through.

As the saying goes, “every day’s a school day”. I’m all for learning something new, and the key to being an Executor in my instance, was organization. I gathered every statement, bank-book, letter and so on I could find. In truth Dad did the leg-work, but I listed down all the numbers, recorded when the bank had changed name or being bought out, organized everything in date order so I had the latest balances; and that included shares.

Like I said, it wasn’t a huge amount but attention to detail is essential and it wasn’t just me I was doing it for, so that added an extra level of pressure.

Probate, when it came through, allowed the Premium Bonds to be released and that was simplicity itself; even though the form had changed since my initial telephone call. But I just rang them up and they sent me a new form and talked me through anything I needed clarifying.

Equinity likewise. I’ve never been one to dabble in shares, so Mum’s were easy to see alongside my free-one’s. I just clicked on them when they appeared, clicked “sell” and provided the bank detail. The only aspect you really have to be careful off was to make sure you picked the right description out of the long, and not always in alphabetical order, list. But with the number of shares popping into view to let you know you have it right does mean you won’t accidentally sell something you don’t own.

Which might be possible, so if you ever do it - be careful.

Being an Executor, at least in my experience, is a bit like tackling a big DIY project, you just need to lay out all the steps required, then go through them one by one. And you also have the backup of knowing if you have to you can knock on a solicitor’s door and ask for help. That said, I used the solicitor to obtain probate, as that is one of their specialisms, and I don’t begrudge the fee.

Shownote Links

• Link to the UK Government’s Tell Us Once service:
• If you missed the deadline, the Do It Yourself link: