How to cope with the frustrations and complications of paperwork when a relative dies

From the endless paperwork involved when someone dies to the misery of sorting through their belongings, the process has been frustrating and complicated. Dad did an awful lot of the right things, which has made things easier for us. There are also things we have picked up through the process that have convinced us both to take a few extra steps to make things as smooth as possible when our own children are faced with this task.

Dad made some sensible plans, for which we are hugely grateful. He thought really carefully about who he would make executors of his will, and after choosing my sister and I, he talked to us about it. It wasn’t something he did for sentimental reasons. He picked organised people with the knowledge and patience to deal with the process. For some people, their partner or children won’t be the right choice – especially if they will be overwhelmed by grief and unable to face any of it. In those cases it may make sense to pick them alongside someone you trust to do the job well, so they don’t have to face it alone.

He also had a really good stab at keeping on top of the paperwork. He had a decent filing system, and kept a register of assets, listing all his accounts and policies. He didn’t keep them completely up to date, but it was a brilliant start. With the benefit of hindsight, it would have been a good idea for him to have made a date to update this each year. It would also have been useful for him to let us know where all the paperwork was. Over Easter, I stumbled across a box of it under a box of photos in a section of the loft that had been obscured by a heap of cardboard.

He also kept accurate records relating to gifts and estates. Dad has been widowed twice, which makes things more complicated. He has all the details of each estate, along with the wills. He also made gifts during his lifetime, and kept a meticulous note of each of them. Calculating any liability for inheritance tax can be an incredibly complicated business – unless you’ve been married forever and leave each other everything on the first death, but at least we are starting with clear records.

We have also been hugely helped by two services that make the process a bit less painful. The first is the government’s ‘Tell Us Once’ scheme, which will inform everyone from HMRC to DVLA – you just need to log onto the service with the code you got when you registered the death. The second is Life Ledger, which is working towards being something similar for everything from bank accounts to pensions, credit cards and utilities. This makes the notification much easier, and is worth considering using if you’re entering the world of Sadmin.

However, there are a few other steps which would definitely have helped. After the financial crisis, Dad worked on the basis that the more accounts he held, the better, so the failure of any bank wouldn’t touch him. If you have savings, it’s essential to stick to the FSCS limit protecting the first £85,000 of your savings with each institution if the bank fails. That’s £85,000 per person, per licence, and you can check the details on the FSCS website See how FSCS protects banks and building societies | FSCS.

However, the FSCS is there to protect you, so you don’t need to spread your money in chunks of a few hundred pounds across a vast array of institutions. In fact, it’s a good idea not to hold more accounts than you need, not just for the sake of those who are working through your estate but also to help you keep an eye on your money.

For those with very substantial savings, you could consider saving through a cash savings platform. Once you have moved your money into savings products, it sits with each individual bank, so you have the FSCS protection of each of them. However, after you pass away, you only have to let the platform know once. Alternatively, there’s NS&I where every penny is backed by the Treasury. In return you won’t get the best rate on the market, but you may decide it’s worth it.

The general consolidation rule applies across all sorts of areas of your finances. Pensions are very different, and if you have the freedom to consolidate them, you still need to check whether doing so would mean giving up any valuable guarantees that make it worth staying put. However, if you have a box full of share certificates, a handful of current accounts, an array of credit cards or fund holdings with a number of firms, it’s worth closing accounts you don’t need, and bringing the rest together in one place to make it easier to manage them. The simpler your affairs are, the easier it is for the people you leave behind.

It would also have been really useful to have a letter of wishes we could have referred to. This is something you keep alongside your will, outlining any specific bequests or wishes for your funeral. It’s only when you find yourself being forced to make decisions about someone’s favourite hymns that you realise it wasn’t really something that tended to come up terribly often. Bequests would have been something meaningful for the grandchildren too. In the end they have selected their favourite things, which is why one of my children has cruet set to remember their Grandad by and another has an alarm clock.

But throughout the whole process, we’ve learned one thing from Dad that we want to live by. He learned how to stretch very little a long way in his early life, and throughout all the years I have known him he saved carefully and made sensible plans, so he could afford to spend money on the things that really mattered to him later.

In his late 50s, while he was married to my stepmum, it was the kind of spending many of us dream of in retirement, and the photos of them exploring the world together are a testament to money well spent. Even later, when he focused on collecting everything from books to 1940s children’s toys, cigarette cards, postcards and old woodworking tools, every carefully wrapped and catalogued lead soldier is a testament to the joy of indulging your passions.

Of course, now I need to find a home for a set of coffin-maker’s planes and no less than eight leather bound copies of Hard Times, but throughout all the misery of Sadmin, it has been a real joy to see all the evidence of a life well lived.

Office for National Statistics figures out this week show that house prices fell for the third consecutive month in February – with prices down 0.3 per cent. However, if you check the figures with slightly more rose-tinted spectacles, there are some positives. The Bank of England Money and Credit figures in February showed that mortgage approvals for future purchases had finally started to recover – for the first time since August last year. It wasn’t a massive rise, and it was from a low level, but it shows there’s still some life left in the market.

Sarah Coles

Head of Personal Finance and Podcast Host for Switch Your Money OnHargreaves Lansdown