JWL Estate Planning Limited

This explains the basis on which we will carry out all the work necessary in obtaining the Grant and for the administration of the Estate of the deceased in relation to non-contentious probate.

1. The firm and its people responsible for your work

Jamie Batt FCCA, Chartered Certified Accountant and CILEXPractitioner (ACCA-Probate), will be responsible for this matter and may be assisted by other members of staff as the matter progresses. We will try hard to avoid changing the people who are handling your work but if this cannot be avoided, we will notify you promptly who will be handling your matter and why the change was necessary.

JWL Estate Planning Limited, will be engaged in the probate work as the CILEX-ACCA probate registered firm, authorised and regulated by CILEX Regulation, whom will be responsible for obtaining the grant of probate/ letters of administration for non-contentious probate, where as JWL Accountancy Limited, which is an ACCA registered accountancy firm, will be responsible for the estate administration, both firms are both owned and operated by Jamie Batt FCCA.

2. Charges and expenses

Our charges are based on the time spent dealing with a matter and will include meetings with you and perhaps others; considering, preparing and working on papers; correspondence; and making and receiving telephone calls.

We will charge you £125.00 per hour for each hour engaged on your matter by Jamie Batt from now until the review date on 1st January and thereafter annually. Routine letters, e-mails and routine telephone calls made and received will be charged in units of 1/10th of an hour. You will be notified of any increase on request.

Please note that the current hourly rates of our accountants, probate practitioner and assistants are as follows: 

Principal £125.00

Other Staff Members: £75.00

Our typical fees for simple estates with no more than 5 assets are as follows (Complex cases will be quoted on a case-by-case basis) our fees are based on time spent, level of skills requires and complexity of the estate.

Our fees range from £750 to £3,750, as we are not presently registered for VAT, so 20% VAT will NOT be added to your bill.

• The price for a straightforward estate requiring 6 hours work will be £750.

• The price for other work for estates still below the Inheritance Tax threshold; with no Inheritance Tax payable and requiring up to 10 hours work will be £1,250.

• The price for estates that are above the Inheritance Tax threshold but below £2million in size will be £2,500.

• The price for estates between £3million to £5million will be £3,750.

• The price for estates above £5million, the fee will increase by approximately £750 per £million of Estate depending on the complexity.

The following work is typically involved in your price:

1. Obtain the Grant of Probate;

• Preparing the grant of representation and applying to the probate registry
• Receiving the grant of probate
• Copies of the grant of probate (fixed fee provides one additional copy only)
• The process of applying for the grant should be completed within 3 to 4 months.
   

2.  Valuing the Estate; 

• All processes in 1 above as well as the following
• Placing newspaper notices
• Reviewing paperwork including death certificate and will
• Obtaining valuations of the estate's assets and liabilities
• Calculating inheritance tax owed
• Calculating gross and net values of the estate
• Notices in Gazette and local papers
   

Administering the Estate; our fees range from £1,999 to £3,999 and Typically involving:

• All processes in 1 & 2 above as well as the following
• Advise re finding lost assets
• Preparing administrators' oath
• Paying debts and liabilities of the estate
• Paying legacies to beneficiaries
• Processing and handling the estate tax
• Distributing the residual estate
• The process of administering an estate should be completed within 3 to 12 months.

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Additional costs

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There are also costs that have to be paid to other organisations, known as disbursements. Where applicable VAT is included at 20%.

• Probate application fee (£273 plus £1.50 for extra copies)
• Swearing of the oath (£5 per document and £2 each for exhibits subject to VAT (20%))
• Bankruptcy-only Land Charges Department searches (£2 per name searched) 
• Placing a notice in The London Gazette (between £80.00 and £109.20 plus VAT (20%)
• Placing a notice in a local newspaper (between £80.00 and £109.20 plus VAT (20%)

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Potential additional costs

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The list below gives an indication of work which might need to be carried out at an additional cost. We can give you a more accurate quote once we have more information about your specific situation.

• there is no will or it has been altered after signature
• executors have died or refuse to act
• the estate consists of shareholdings (stocks and bonds)
• additional copies of the grant are required
• dealing with the sale or transfer of any property in the estate is not included.
• work required if inheritance tax is payable, including preparing full inheritance tax account, submission to and dealing with HMRC
• there are missing beneficiaries

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3. Preparation of Estate Accounts

Where the deceased was domiciled in England and Wales, best practice dictates that formal detailed Estate Accounts are prepared. We will prepare these when the Estate Administration has been completed, we will engage with our accountancy firm to complete these on our behalf. 

These will then enable us to review the position in terms of any outstanding liability for payment of Inheritance, Capital Gains and Income Tax where there are statutory obligations on the part of the Personal Representative to account to HM Revenue & Customs.

4. Client Money

Any money received on behalf of the estate will be held by JWL Accountancy Limited’s client account,  as JWL Estate Planning Ltd which is the CILEX ACCA Probate Entity can not hold client money and can not engage in the estate administration work 

5. Storage of papers and documents

After completing the work, we are entitled to keep all your papers and documents while there is money owing to us for our charges and expenses. We will keep our file papers (except for any of your papers which you ask to be returned to you) for no more than 6 years. We need the file on the understanding that we have the authority to destroy it 6 years after the date of the final bill we send you for this matter. We will not destroy documents you ask us to deposit in safe custody.

If we retrieve papers or documents from storage in relation to continuing or new instructions to act in connection with your affairs, we will not normally charge for such retrieval. 

However, we may make a charge based on time spent producing stored papers or documents to you or another at your request. We may also charge for reading, correspondence or other work necessary to comply with the instructions given by you or on your behalf.

6. Money Laundering Regulations and Payments to our Account

You agree to provide us with such evidence of identity and, if relevant, that of Directors, Partners, Trustees and Controllers of your Company or Firm and of all connected Shareholders and Parties as we may reasonably require in order to comply with our obligations under legislation and the Money Laundering Regulations 2017(as amended 2019). We may cease to act for you if you fail to comply with any such request. In appropriate cases, we will complete an electronic identity check on all individuals relevant to your matter in order to comply with our anti-money laundering obligations. By instructing us, you consent to us completing an electronic identity check on you and others on your behalf where necessary. Accountants are under a professional and legal obligation to keep the affairs of the client confidential. This obligation, however, is subject to a statutory exception; Legislation on money laundering and terrorist financing has placed accountants under a legal duty in certain circumstances to disclose information to the National Crime Agency. Where an accountant knows or suspects that a transaction on behalf of a client involves money laundering, the accountant may be required to make a disclosure. If, while we are acting for you, it becomes necessary to make such a disclosure, we may not be able to inform you that it has been made, or of the reasons for it, because the law prohibits ‘tipping-off’. Where the law permits us, we will tell you about any potential money laundering problem and explain what action we may need to take.

It is the firm’s policy not to accept cash payments in any one transaction which exceed in aggregate £200. We require cleared funds before completing a transaction and these should be by way of banker’s cheque or draft, building society cheque or banker’s payment such as BACS or CHAPS. Money paid by personal cheque draft or banker’s payment must be cleared into our Client Account before we can draw against it. This may delay a transaction if cleared funds are not available.

We reserve the right (without being liable for any consequent loss that you may suffer) to delay the progress of a transaction at any stage, even at completion, if we need to check the source of any payment received from you or on account of you.

7.  Termination

You may terminate your instructions to us in writing at any time but we will be entitled to keep all your papers and documents while there is money owing to us for our charges and expenses.

In some circumstances, you may consider we ought to stop acting for you, for example, if you cannot give clear or proper instructions on how we are to proceed, or if it is clear that you have lost confidence in how we are carrying out your work.

We may decide to stop acting for you only with good reason, for example, if you do not pay an interim bill or comply with our request for a payment on account. We must give you reasonable notice that we will stop acting for you.

If you or we decide that we will no longer act for you, you will pay our charges on an

hourly basis and expenses as set out earlier.

8. Confidentiality

Our firm may be subject to audit or quality checks by external firms or organisations. We may also outsource work. This might be for example typing, photocopying, costings, research or preparation to assist you with your matter. Information from your file may therefore be made available in such circumstances. Our accounting ledgers are maintained by JWL Accountancy Limited with whom we are linked with.

9. Data Protection

We confirm that we are the Data Controller of personal information (personal data) relating to living individuals who are either a named client or through whom we conduct our relationship with you. The information we hold may also contain special category data.

We will process such data in accordance with the provisions of the General Data Protection Regulation and Data Protection Act 2018. By instructing us you are entering in to a contract with us and therefore we have a lawful reason for processing your data, both manually and by electronic means, for the purposes of providing advice, administration and management of your file. We also have the lawful right to process your data because we have a legitimate interest in providing you with a service.

“Processing” includes obtaining, recording or holding information or data, transferring it to other companies associated with us, service providers, the SRA or any other statutory, governmental or regulatory body for legitimate purposes including, where relevant, to solicitors and/or other debt collection agencies for debt collection purposes and carrying out operations on the information or data.

We will not pass your personal information to parties located outside of the European Economic Area (EEA). We will obtain your permission to contact you with details of similar services or for related marketing purposes which we think may be of interest to you.

If you do not want us to contact you for marketing purposes, please let us know:

• By post: JWL Accountancy, 1 Whitgreave Lane, Rugeley, Staffs, WS15 1NG 

• By phone: 01889 597839

• By email: Jim@JWLAccountancy.com

All members of JWL treat all personal data and special category data as confidential and will not process it other than for a legitimate purpose. Steps will be taken to ensure that the information is accurate, kept up to date and not kept for longer than is necessary. Measures will also be taken to safeguard against unauthorised or unlawful processing and accidental loss or destruction or damage to the data.

Subject to certain exceptions, you are entitled to have access to your personal and special category data held by us.

10.  Communication between you and us and any complaints you may have

We are committed to high quality advice and client care. If you are unhappy about

any aspect of our services or our bill, please contact Jim Batt directly on 01889 597839, by e-mail at Jim@JWLAccountancy.com or by writing to our office address. We have procedures in place which detail how we handle complaints and a copy of our Complaints Policy is available from the following the link: 

https://jwlaccountancy.co.uk/complaints-policy

15. Limitation of Liability 

Under no circumstances shall our liability to you for damages for breach of contract, negligence, other tort, breach of trust or otherwise (including legal costs) exceed £500,000.

Our professional indemnity insurance is held by JWL Accountancy Limited, but covers both the ACCA registered accountancy firm and the CILEX-ACCA Probate firm. 

16. Equality and Diversity 

JWL is committed to promoting equality and diversity in all of its dealings with clients, third parties and employees. 

17. Agreement 

Your continuing instructions in this matter will amount to your acceptance of these terms and conditions of business. This is an important document: please keep it in a safe place for future reference. 

If you need have any concerns on the process or require further information please contact us.

Authorised and Regulated as a CILEX – ACCA Probate Entity, Authorisation number 3001247