Dying parent

[Fitbin]

Hi,

I'm an unfortunate situation that my mum has a terminal illness and may not have much time left. It is up to my brother and myself to sort out everything, which isn't something we've done before.

There are two areas that I'd appreciate advice on:

1 - Power of attorney. I understand that this is a process whereby my mum can delegate management of her finances and affairs to one of us, which she wishes to do. Can anyone advise on how to take this forward?

2 - Estate. She doesn't have a will yet - again, any advice welcome - but would her estate (which isn't really that much, no property or anything) automatically pass to us, her sons? She's a widow but has some family in Scotland too.

If anyone can give us some pointers, it would be warmly welcomed.

Thanks,

Ant

[raysparx1]

Hi Fitbin,

So sorry to hear that, I think the best thing to do is get on to Citizens advice, it is easy to get power of attorney, as for a will if there isn't a lot of money or property involved you can buy a will pack from a stationers but a lot of Solicitors will do it free or for a very small charge, it should not be a hard thing to sort out, wish you well, thinking of you, Ray

[Hellion]

I'm so sorry of this sad situation.

Go to a local solicitor and they can draw up a power of attorney and a will for you and advise you.

Not having a will causes a lots of unnecessary complications and takes a lot of time to sort out it, is much better to have will, if she has a house it makes it difficult to sell until everyhthing is sorted out..

It also means that she can will certain items to certain people.

A friend of mine recently died recently with no will (and although I had no expectations) another friend of ours got very upset because apparently he had intended to leave all of his camera equipment to me and his guitars to my husband as it was a hobby we shared and his brothers sold it all as they were not interested.

[Octavius]

I would recommend that she write a will. If she dies intestate then you may have to go through some lengthy form filling and interviews (to obtain probate) with some legal costs to ensure that the estate is passed to you and your brother. Either way, the issue of inheritance tax will be unavoidable if the estate (inc house, savings, shares etc) is worth more than �285,000.

As mentioned above, you can get very good advice from the CAB and it is free, so I would start there and see what advice they can give.