One of many things that need to be done while administering an estate is verifying the identity of the beneficiaries before they can receive their entitlement.
This is also a requirement when requesting funds from various financial institutions and the standard procedure is for the beneficiary to provide an original or certified copy of their proof of ID and proof of address.
One of our cases that we recently worked on involved a beneficiary who lives abroad and due to their age, they are in a vulnerable group. They were also the Personal Representative for the estate so their involvement was crucial to progressing the estate administration.
The Coronavirus is currently affecting every country. However, in their country it is particularly bad. The Government’s advice were for all vulnerable people to stay at home.
As such, our client was unable to leave home to post their ID documents to us or have someone visit them to collect the documents due to the social distancing measures. Moreover, due to the lockdown most solicitors were closed, so they would not be able to get certified copies either.
We had to adapt to everything that was going on, including making a decision on what would be acceptable to progress the estate administration to the next stage and as a result we accepted scanned copies of his documents which they sent to us by e-mail.
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