The scenario
Mr Thomas was the client of our partner, a wealth manager based in the Cotswolds. He died in March 2017. His wife had died several years earlier and as he did not have any children of his own, he had named his niece, Mary, as an Executor in his Will.
His estate was worth £2.9 million and was made up largely of cash assets and shareholdings, three of which were held overseas. As Mary lived in Europe with her young family, she was unable to travel back to the UK on a regular basis. This meant that being able to deal with the estate administration process via phone, email and online was particularly important for her.
The wealth manager referred Mary to Kings Court Trust’s client services team who organised a phone call to take place in the evening as this was the most convenient time for her to speak. During this call we explained how we could deal with all aspects of her uncle’s estate. We also outlined how our service would be delivered and explained that she could log into our Insight technology at any time to keep up to date of the progress we were making, negating the need for face to face meetings or regular phone calls.
How we saved the client more than £60,000 in legal fees
Mary said that she had already been contacted by a national firm of solicitors in the UK who were named as joint Executor in her uncle’s Will. They had explained how they too could administer the estate for a fee that was equivalent to 2.5% of the estate value - £72,500.
-png.png?width=17&name=phone-call%20(7)-png.png){kind=small}
%20A4%20PNG.png?width=89&height=118&name=AGFD%20Logo%20%2B%20(R)%20A4%20PNG.png)
