avoiding the need for probate

[dubre]

No other country was involved. House clearance was being was being organised by a distant relative( I think) prior to the funeral. Nobody questioned the authority of this Englishman to do this, apparently.

[Lootman]

Answers to Lootman queries:

I took the sale details from http://www.rightmove.co.uk which gave the sale price and date, also basic detail about the property.

I know for a fact that there was no probate only as much as it does not appear on the government website for wills/probate.

Yes, the sale proceeds? Presumably they went to the person who acquired the property prior to her death or to her joint tenant. Perhaps a charity was involved?

My first thought was that the cash proceeds (I assume here there was no mortgage on the property if the deceased was elderly) were spirited away for the purpose of avoiding IHT. And then if the residual estate was small there would be no motivation to initiate probate by anyone, and therefore no personal liability assumed.

But the sale was £200,000. If indeed the value of the residual estate was small, then the estate is under the amount of the nil-rate band anyway. So it is a mystery.

If I were the executor of an estate and the value of that estate appeared to be much lower than I had expected, for a reason such as this, I would probably assume that the immediate family and beneficiaries were lying to me about something, and I would renounce.

On the other hand, if I knew I was soon to be deceased, I might give away everything I had prior to death, just to spare my next of kin the hassle of going through probate. I know CK said it is not really a big deal in terms of time and effort. But he does this professionally and it can be time-consuming - even the simple estate I handled for my mother took 3/4 months to go through, which was very frustrating for me. When my uncle died probate took over a year. So perhaps she was just trying to spare her immediate family the bother and the delay?