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I fell into this line of work by accident, really, but it has proved to be a very interesting and absorbing education! I started as a paralegal at a local solicitors’ firm specializing mainly in probate applications and estate administration, with some trust management work too. I didn’t have any relevant professional qualifications when I started, just a bit of work experience, good English and math and an enthusiasm to learn.  I started at David Allen in February this year and hit the ground running with a raft of new cases primed and ready for my arrival.

A typical day involves emails, letters, telephone calls and meetings, most of which are with clients or third parties.  Work includes reviewing deceased estate paperwork and collating the necessary information, preparing inheritance tax returns and legal statements, applying for probate, completing encashment and transfer forms, preparing accounts, and distributing monies.  It looks like a standard office job, but it is far from it.

There are some areas of law and finance that only require you to look at one particular area of a person’s life in isolation – buying a house for example, does not usually require you to know about your client’s family tree or their pension provisions.  Probate work is the opposite of that.  In dealing with a probate case, it is necessary to know almost all there is to know about the deceased person’s life – their family tree, their current and former relations, their finances, their property, their business, their domicile etc etc. Firstly, this is because the personal representatives must make the fullest enquiries they can, to ascertain the extent and content of a deceased person’s estate.  If they don’t and some sizeable asset crops up down the line, rectifying it can be costly and cumbersome.  Secondly, the personal representatives must understand how the estate is to be distributed and who the beneficiaries are, particularly with an intestacy where there is a strict order of entitlement.  Knowing the family tree and understanding the relations between the deceased and those who benefit (or don’t benefit) from the estate is important.  Unsurprisingly, perhaps the most common questions we get asked are the fundamental ones: ‘who has the authority to deal with the estate?’ and ‘who benefits from the estate?’

For me, this breadth is what makes the job so interesting and educational.  No two estates are ever the same because no two lives are ever the same; each life is unique.  Ironically, a job centered on death can be strangely life affirming.

And in that spirit, I often find myself reviewing the daily achievements and considering the potential future ones.  A major contributor to those successes are the people at David Allen, particularly in my department, who are incredibly supportive and experts in their fields.  They motivate me to keep developing professionally so that I can reciprocate.