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November has been reasonably quiet – nothing very exciting or of note to mention.  We have had various wills that have been completed and signed, a few probates which are nearing completion, one of them after our having to wait for several months for a response from a certain bank.  To get them to respond I ended up having to report them to the Financial Ombudsman and wouldn’t you know it a week after I reported them (and the Financial Ombudsman contacted them) they responded (after 13 months of chasing letters!).

So last Blog I was moaning about having to go through over 3 years worth of files for one client – I wish I hadn’t said anything as the Revenue have raised some queries at the 11^th hour on a large probate we are administering and now I am going to have to trawl through files dating back to 2002!!  (That will serve me right for ranting about it last time!).  My tip therefore for this month is that if you know an estate or file is going to be a long time running I would now suggest that you keep a note of important dates in connection with it so you can pinpoint the date when a certain event happened without having to bring up all files from storage. 

I also find precedent document binders really useful to keep copies of documents that are important to the file for example in a probate I would keep a binder with a copy of the Will, Oath, Inheritance Tax account, asset schedule etc in it so these documents could be easily referred to.  I cannot tell you the amount of time this saves when various companies call and request information or when the Estate Accountant and/or HM Revenue & Customs raise queries you have got all the information there to hand or at least an indicator as to what file you would find it in!

Fingers crossed for something exciting to happen before the next blog!