{"id":10484,"date":"2023-11-02T17:13:36","date_gmt":"2023-11-02T17:13:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sbwm.uk\/?p=10484"},"modified":"2023-11-02T17:13:36","modified_gmt":"2023-11-02T17:13:36","slug":"intestacy-limit-breach-delays-uplift","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sbwm.uk\/v3\/news\/intestacy-limit-breach-delays-uplift\/","title":{"rendered":"Intestacy limit breach delays uplift"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b>A key intestacy limit was due to increase in December 2022, but the timing was overlooked\u2026 until July 2023.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n<p>The intestacy rules for England and Wales state that where there is no will, if on first death the deceased leaves children, grandchildren or great grandchildren, the surviving spouse or civil partner is entitled to the deceased\u2019s personal chattels plus the lesser of:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>the value of the deceased\u2019s residual estate; and<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li>a fixed monetary amount plus half the remaining estate.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In 2014, an amendment to the Administration of Estates Act 1925 was added stating that \u201cthe Lord Chancellor must, before the end of a period of 21 days\u201d increase the fixed monetary amount if the consumer price index (CPI) measure of inflation had risen by more than 15% since the figure was last set. The aim of the amendment was to ensure that the fixed monetary amount did not suffer the fate of, for example, the inheritance tax nil rate band, and have its value seriously eroded by inflation over time.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>In November 2022, the CPI triggered the increase clause, but the Ministry of Justice failed to notice. In fact, it was not until 26 July 2023 that the overdue increase took effect. By then inflation was enough to mean the increase applied was 19.3% \u2013 a \u00a352,000 rise from \u00a3270,000 to \u00a3322,000. An embarrassed Ministry did not issue any accompanying press release and made no reference to the seven-month delay in the explanatory note to the regulation introducing the higher limit.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>The House of Lords Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee was unimpressed, saying that the Ministry had made an \u201cinexcusable error in timing\u201d and \u201cbreached the law\u201d. The Committee also noted that \u201csome estate beneficiaries may have lost out because they have received amounts that are significantly lower than they would have been entitled to\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Intestacy rules differ throughout the UK and there are no automatic increase triggers in Scottish or Northern Irish legislation, where fixed cash amounts applying in similar circumstances have not been revised since February 2012 and January 2008 respectively.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>\u201cGet a will and keep it up to date\u201d<\/i><\/b> is advice that often appears in the personal finance pages and elsewhere. The significant lapse by the Ministry of Justice is just one more reason why having a current will is such an important recommendation.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><b><i>The Financial Conduct Authority does not regulate tax, wills or estate planning advice. <span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n\n<!-- wp:themify-builder\/canvas \/-->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A key intestacy limit was due to increase in December 2022, but the timing was overlooked\u2026 until July 2023.\u00a0 The intestacy rules for England and Wales state that where there is no will, if on first death the deceased leaves children, grandchildren or great grandchildren, the surviving spouse or civil partner is entitled to the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10485,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":160,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sbwm.uk\/v3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sbwm.uk\/v3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sbwm.uk\/v3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbwm.uk\/v3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbwm.uk\/v3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sbwm.uk\/v3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10484\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbwm.uk\/v3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sbwm.uk\/v3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbwm.uk\/v3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbwm.uk\/v3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}