By Carl Marston, Senior Associate Solicitor, Court of Protection Team, Morr & Co LLP
Usually, the local authority’s social services or the Court of Protection Panel will refer a new case to us. Often this will be someone who has been moved into care, and they have no close family to provide any background or financial history.
As a result, it is important to ascertain as much information as possible from the outset. In some cases, the Court will issue an Interim Order to investigate a person’s financial situation with the aim of confirming whether they have sufficient funds to support their ongoing care and financial needs.
Where a Deputy has been appointed but the protected party passes away, the Deputy’s authority ends immediately and unable to undertake any further work on behalf of that person. Therefore, as well as establishing the assets within an estate for care provision, it is also important that we complete a Will Search at the earliest opportunity. By locating the Will this allows the Deputy to confirm who should be contacted upon death but also confirms who will inherit those assets when the person dies.
A Will is a roadmap of how a person’s finances should be dealt with and if there is a particular asset – like a picture to be left to a granddaughter for example – we can ensure that this is gifted to the relative, rather than sold as part of the estate. It is about understanding and seeking to conduct our clients wishes as far as we can.
To ensure that we can confirm the extent of a protected party’s assets to the Court, we request an asset search with Estatesearch as an immediate priority on each matter. We also use Estatesearch for Will Searches as our preferred supplier.
The advantage of instructing Estatesearch is the cost saving made as the deputy is not having to contact multiple financial institutions which would take considerable billable time, and we always want to provide the best most economic service possible for our clients.
When it comes to asset searches, Estatesearch does the leg work for us. Estatesearch’s Financial Profile Search is a cost effective and efficient way of making enquiries of more than 150 organisations, searching over 450 companies and brands including banks, building societies, investment managers, share registrars, pension providers and insurers to help identify accounts. Once we are aware where the protected party’s funds are being held, we can then make further enquiries to confirm balances and formally register the deputy Order.
It is quite common that the deputy may need to apply to the Court for permission to sell the protected party’s property, this may take up to 12 months before authority to sell is confirmed. It is therefore important that clients with immediate care needs, the deputy must therefore seek to identify where there are liquid assets. Accessing funds is essential and Estatesearch can help us identify assets within someone’s estate quickly and efficiently.
We order Estatesearch’s Asset search and Will Search through a secure online portal. As well as financial assets, the search has in the past also helped us identify a potentially politically exposed person. Following further enquiries, the person identified turned out to be a someone sharing the same name as our client. It is reassuring to know we are alerted to these kinds of issues to enable further verification to be undertaken where required.
At Morr & Co LLP, we are a close-knit team and establishing a dependable team of experts upon who we and our clients can depend upon is at the forefront of everything we do. We believe that a good deputy is someone who operates in the background as much as possible but who can address what needs to be done and at the time.
Whilst each case is individual and different, we work to make demanding situations as smooth and stress free as possible, creating a team of other trusted professionals who can provide their expertise and support throughout our involvement with our client.
We would absolutely recommend Estatesearch. Our deputyship work is necessarily tightly controlled in terms of costs and Estatesearch provides a cost efficient, efficient service that makes our job easier. In turn this means better outcomes for our vulnerable clients and their families.
This article was published by Estatesearch as part of their advertising agreement with Today’s Wills and Probate.
The views expressed in this article are those of the submitter and not those of Today’s Wills and Probate.
