Executor of the will hiding assets and has been done for fraud 4 times.. help please!

[Fairbs]

Hi thank you for reading

to cut a very very long story short I am the god daughter to the deceased and I was left 50% of the estate and a house alongside my Mum who was gifted a separate house and the other 50% of the estate.

The brother was made executor of the will I guess as a final lesson for being so troubling to my godfather throughout their life- However me and my mum are the only two people named on the will. We know that he has been done for fraud 4times and bankrupt 4 times. He claimed to the solicitor he didn’t know who we were yet we have been more or less part of the family for the past 23 years. He was talking to us at the funeral!!!

My godfathers sister made a point of telling us early on after speaking to the executor (also her brother) that there were several different insurance policies in my godfathers name. He said before he had 15 insurance policies. Three pensions also.
None of these where on the letter for probate we received. We informed the solicitor straight away and she said she suspected something was wrong but could not ask us to begin we had to question it.
It has been over a month since we have now been able to speak with the solicitor and when we call she is always busy or out of the office and does not respond to emails. My godfathers wallet has also gone missing.

Should we look at speaking to another solicitor? The brother needs to be removed from the will and looked into for fraud again as the wallet and several accounts have all gone missing along with the motability scooter.
We have the keys to the house and have sent a polite email explaining we are new to the situation and wondered if we could get the house ready to live in? There is 14,000 owed on the house and there is a letter stating that the mortgage is owing and missing payments needs to be arranged.

any advice on any aspect of this post would be greatly appreciated

Thanks for reading!

[Peridot]

Re: Executor of the will hiding assets and has been done for fraud 4 times.. help ple

Hi Fairbs,
Unfortunately there is nothing preventing a bankrupt from acting as executor. It appears that the executor has instructed solicitors to act on his behalf, which is probably a good thing although frustrating when they are not communicating with you at the moment.

Do you (or any other members of his family) have any proof of what assets your godfather had other than hearsay or the information in the estate interim accounts? If you are aware of any insurance policies that have not been declared then maybe some investigating by the solicitor would help to at least find out if the policies have been cashed in. Of course you would need more detail than suspicion. It may be that an insurance policy was nominated to a specific person/people so would not necessarily form part of the estate for inheritance tax (IHT) purposes, although would still need to be declared in the IHT forms.

You need formal advice about this. It is difficult to get an executor removed but not impossible. There must be evidence of any fraud if that is what you are alleging and which you would have to evidence. If a beneficiary is unsure of an executor’s actions, they can initially write to the executor asking them for an account of the administration of the estate (which appears to have happened already). If the beneficiary is still dissatisfied with the executor’s explanation, they can apply to the court to remove and substitute the executor. As mentioned above this is a difficult thing to do. The beneficiaries must prove to the court that the executor has seriously misbehaved. The courts, generally, will only remove an executor if they have done the following:-
criminal conviction.
incapability – physical or mental disability (albeit permanent or temporary), which is preventing them from performing their duties.
unsuitability – possibly conflict of interest or serious misconduct (which is what I think you would have to prove in this situation)

I would suggest you persevere at this point trying to get an explanation from the solicitor and if needs be request their complaints procedure to make this more formal. There is a duty to the residuary beneficiaries too. I would also obtain clarification that the properties are secure.

There are many law firm sites that give you more detailed explanations of what would need to be done to remove an executor, if that is the only option, (although they of course keep the explanations brief as they want you to go and see them to discuss) but there are many factors to consider least of all how to prove what you suspect has happened.

In addition, hopefully once you have had a response from the solicitor (but if not still definitely worth exploring) it may be sensible to obtain some legal advice yourselves to see what options you have to try and get the matter finalised. There are many law firms that would offer a free half hour or reduced fee initial appointment but as mentioned you will need to prove the executor has acted inappropriately to have any chance of removing him.