ANOTHER TALE OF BANKING WOE

As regular readers of these pages will already be aware, even if it's not been something of such significance that they might have bothered to remember it, I am in the process of trying very hard to deal with my late mother's Estate.

I have recently become the "official" Executor ("Huzzah!") and I have even managed to open an Executor's Bank Account ("Huzzah! Again...") and that account currently holds the princely sum of £0.00 because, despite the fact that both my late mother's accounts and the new account both bear the same name, both exist in the same branch, and in order for me to have the account, that branch had to see all of the relevant information and documentation to allow that to happen, somehow money still can't make the hop from one part of the bank to the other.

They just don't like letting it go, do they…?

This time, however, it appears that it was actually my fault…

What am I saying? It seems that it's always my fault. I always believe that I'm bound to have done something wrong anyway, but when the letter arrived last Saturday morning telling me that I needed to get a letter from my solicitor renouncing his Executorship, I did rather think that the last four months of doing precisely that (I know that I did, because I currently have a huge unpaid bill for them doing exactly that…) had rather been a waste of time.

Still, when we rang up the relevant department and told them this, it turned out that we'd somehow, perhaps because of all of the other paperwork we've been wading through, managed to forget to sign the transfer documents when we sent them off.

But, of course, the bank can't just send them back to us.

Oh no.

No, they have to send a new blank document for us to fill in from scratch all over again and, rather naturally, this will eventually have delayed the whole process of making funds available to pay some of those creditors by at least another fortnight, if not longer.

Whilst I do fully understand that they do have to put all of these levels of protection in place, sometimes it does feel as if they are constantly suggesting that I'm some kind of con-artist trying to deprive a little old lady of all of her life savings, and also that the bank are extraordinarily reluctant to release the funds which are, in all honesty, actually ours and not theirs...

Happily, because we had one very tiny cheque to pay in, I was able to complete the Direct Debit form that the very same bank's insurance arm have been getting so insistent over, because, assuming that they honour it (this is by no means certain), the amount is just large enough to cover at least two month's premiums and so we know it's (probably) covered, at least for the time-being. This is basically because the bank have been sending some very unfriendly, demanding and threatening letters despite the fact that I have, rather begrudgingly, written them cheques in my own name just to shut them up and maintain the cover that they seem so reluctant to actually give.

This is all, of course, despite the fact that way back on day three after my mother's death, whilst we were still in a certain amount of shock, the solicitor told us in no uncertain terms that the family should not have to pay a penny out of their own pockets for anything and that everyone knows that they might have to wait up to a year to get their payment...

Meanwhile, companies like the telephone company and the water company are getting more devious. 

Having first not really understood the concept that a customer might actually leave them by such means (I kid you not…), these companies have since passed the so-called debt onto a collection agency disguised as a caring legal company, the sort that send letters "sympathising with your loss" and informing you how Probate works and asking you to ring a certain number, we contacted both firms and had a note put on the account which should have shut them up.

Now, however, someone's given these parasites our telephone number and we're getting messages from the same collection agency insisting that we ring them quoting a particular reference number, and I'm still expecting the intimidating burly men to show up one day making various demands that they are not entitled to make.

Happily, my Beloved is made of sterner stuff than I and will speak to such people without having some sort of a crisis, and get rid of them, telling them that she would prefer to deal with the companies directly and not through some mysterious third party.

One up to us, I think (Or hope… although I'm never sure these things aren't going to come back and bite us later), but I do wonder how other people might react when faced with such intimidating looking documents, especially when they're going through what is, quite naturally, a difficult time during which they can feel very vulnerable and, perhaps, very much alone.

Meanwhile, that stack of bills is still taunting me, calling out to me, and demanding to be paid, a situation which I, quite frankly, detest, given that I've normally almost got the cheque in the post for my own bills before that bill's even hit the doormat. Such is the madness of the current situation, that I've even considered raiding my own paltry savings account and transferring that across in order to be rid of some of them, but wiser heads have prevailed over this and I am resisting doing so, despite getting ever so twitchy.

Look (you utter swines!), I will pay you all eventually, but, in the meantime, will you just leave me alone to get on with actually getting hold of what was, after all, my mother's money (and NOT the bank's…) so that I can hand most of it over to you…

And, as wiser minds than mine have already noted countless times before, these things too will pass…