Although the obvious subject for a blog for the LAPG website is a world-weary critique of legal aid and the lack of interest or indeed the outright hostility of the government, I thought a more practical blog would be better. Slightly therapeutic for me but hopefully a few tips that are useful. Do put in any other tips in the comments section.
We have in the last year dealt with the death of my mother-in-law (who moved to Scotland from Yorkshire 6 years ago) and moved my mother from Norfolk to our house – she is in transit waiting for the purchase of a retirement flat to be completed.
Here are my top tips:
- Clearing a house, either after death or to downsize, is very hard work physically and emotionally. If there is physical distance involved, it is particularly draining. The one thing that would have helped us a lot was to go through a parent’s finances while they were alive and in particular to understand their filing system. Having unnecessary paperwork was problematic as we felt we had to check through everything but is something that can with tact be sorted out. Having information online was helpful. We did know online passwords so that was a good start.
- After a death the one stop shop service is really helpful. See Tell Us Once: https://www.gov.uk/after-a-death/organisations-you-need-to-contact-and-tell-us-once We were told about this at the registration of the deaths we have dealt with and the service saves a lot of time and bureaucracy. All government and local government departments will be notified of the death.
- Bereavement teams at utility and other companies at least recognise the bereavement but some customer service teams are appalling. If you were really cut up about a death, you may find the lack of sensitivity extraordinary.
- Know where the will is. If you can find the will, well done. However do you understand it? My mother-in-law survived my father-in-law. A trust had been set up. None of us understood why and the solicitors dealing did not understand why. So do review your will and if you can check the will of anybody you will be dealing with, just do it. And if you are the solicitors who drew up the will perhaps be kind enough to answer questions rather than ignore the family who have offered to pay for an explanation.
- If you make a will in England and then move to Scotland, your will is akin to a foreign will and you need to get it certified as a valid will. It took us several weeks to achieve this. Funnily enough, the solicitors who drafted the will would not certify that it was valid. (Are you beginning to see a theme here?)
- Antiques? Those precious figures in the display cabinet? Don’t count on them being worth anything. And if the family does not want the Wedgwood dinner service, honestly you will struggle to find an auctioneer or an antiques dealer who wants it.
- Charity shops. Charity shops with parking nearby – what a glorious find these were. We found one that took everything except the inflatable mattress (people might use it as a lilo on the open seas).
- The local dump. I have to say that Stirling dump and the dump in North Norfolk are two of my favourite places. Really helpful staff make a huge difference. Having an area for recycling is great. It takes a lot of time and effort to recycle individual pieces of furniture but in Stirling there was a cavernous container that took everything from furniture to board games.
- Freecycle though – it feels awful just getting rid of much-loved possessions, so this was good – but time consuming. https://www.freecycle.org/
- What to do with an elderly cockapoo? For various reasons (including not working at home, already having dogs etc.) nobody in the family could take on my mother-in-law’s dog. We found a charity that for a small donation would rehome it. The Oldies Club were very helpful www.oldies.org.uk
- Loose photos – oh so many. And who are all these people? This will become less of a problem over the years because of digital photos but honestly you could save yourself a lot of work by going through these before illness or death make it impossible.
It would be good to have LAPG members’ top tips so please do add them in.