No – View does not have a trust account and cannot hold estate funds on trust as part of the estate administration process.
View deliberately does not maintain a trust account as our experience is that (unless the estate is being contested) funds are best managed by the executors directly.
The most common position is that, following death, existing bank accounts of the deceased will be kept open to receive deposits (eg share dividends, interest from term deposits etc). However, until satisfying requirements of the bank (eg obtaining probate) the executors will not be able to easily withdraw funds. Some exceptions will generally be allowed, for example to allow payment of certain debts to occur such as (for example) the funeral account, rates, invoices and interest. The payments permitted will be determined by the financial institution on a case by case basis.
The executors should separately open a bank account in the name of the estate, which will serve the same purpose as using a solicitor’s trust account.
The name of the account should be ‘[#name of executors] as executors for the estate of [#name of deceased]. The executors will generally need to produce certified copies of the will and death certificate, as well as the usual 100 points of ID verification for each executor to open the account.
Once the estate account has been established the executors will be able to transact on it to meet the requirements of the administration.
For completeness it is noted that some financial institutions may allow an existing account of the deceased to be repurposed as an estate account, however generally this is not permitted.