Help please - Debt from an estate due to bereavement

[Jasper1965]

I understand that it's still an option that the OP posts a notice pursuant to Section 27, Trustee Act 1925 in the London Gazette inviting creditors to enter a claim against the estate.

 

Such a notice places the burden of proof of entitlement upon the claimant.

 

Protection by means of advertisement

27.--

 

• (1) With a view to the conveyance to or distribution among the persons entitled to any real or personal property, the trustees of a settlement or of a disposition on trust for sale or personal representatives, may give notice by advertisement in the Gazette, and [in a newspaper circulating in the district in which the land is situated] and such other like notices, including notices elsewhere than in England and Wales, as would, in any special case, have been directed by a court of competent jurisdiction in an action for administration, of their intention to make such conveyance or distribution as aforesaid, and requiring any person interested to send to the trustees or personal representatives within the time, not being less than two months, fixed in the notice or, where more than one notice is given, in the last of the notice, particulars of his claim in respect of the property or any part thereof to which the notice relates.
  (2) At the expiration of the time fixed by the notice of trustees or personal representatives may convey or distribute the property or any part thereof to which the notice relates, to or among the persons entitled thereto, having regard only to the claims, whether formal or not, of which the trustees or personal representatives then had notice and shall not, as respects the property so conveyed or distributed, be liable to any person of whose claim the trustees or personal representatives have not had notice at the time of conveyance or distribution; but nothing in this section--
  
  • (a) prejudices the right of any person to follow the property, or any property representing the same, into the hands of any person, other than a purchaser, who may have received it; or
    (b) frees the trustees or personal representatives from any obligation to make searches or obtain official certificates of search similar to those which an intending purchaser would be advised to make or obtain.
    

   

 

Link http://www.london-gazette.co.uk/place-notice/personal-legal/deceased-estates

 

 

The DCA will have a defined notice period (2 months I believe) during which to make their claim. Of course not many DCA's probably correlate LG notices against their 'client' database, in the event a creditor did make a claim then they must then prove entitlement which forces them to produce the documentation you seek.

Edited June 3, 2010 by Jasper1965