Good afternoon, yes we are in Scotland.

Normally if someone dies without a will (intestate) there is a court process to get the authority to dispose of any assets owned by the deceased. There are rules related to intestacy - in brief (I recall) the first £270k goes to the spouse, the remainder to children.

However there is a fairly low level below which I believe strict rules are not applied but this often depends on the company involved.

The point about Scotland is worth bearing in mind as things may be different north of the border. Hoever I would suggest your next step should be:

• if the estate is large you need to get a solicitor involved to make sure that you do the right things in the right order. Particularly true if your father had large bank accounts or investments in his own name. You also need to deal properly with things in joint names - eg: house, bank accounts etc
• otherwise, assuming the proceeds from the sale of the car are in your bank account, I would be inclined to simply tell the garage that:

(a) they have bought and paid for the car,

(b) you are not aware of anything in the documents supporting their contention,

(c) what was done was with the best of intentions

(d) you have no intention of collecting the car which was sold in good faith

(e) they may like to consider training their branch staff appropriately

Do this courteously, not angrily, and leave no room for them to argue the toss. They may just conlude that it is not worth pursuing or that they acted wrongly anyway!.

You can transfer the V5C of a vehicle to someone else if the original person on the document has died. I know this for a fact because, after my Father passed away, I had to do this because the DVLA don't like having vehicles registered in the names of people who have died. All the DVLA requested was a letter of explanation and a copy of the death certificate from myself. It's obviously not possible for the previous owner to sign the V5C transfer in this particular situation so the DVLA will accept these documents instead.

However, of course, the question of actual ownership is a completely different matter and may possibly involve solicitors and the matter of probate.

Edited by Galaxy on 23/02/2020 at 12:19

As stated although Scottish law does differ from English they are broadly similar and this issue is not that complicated. No will presumably means a modest estate. On your fathers death goods and chattels pass to his spouse, your mother. She now has title to the goods and chattels and can sell them if she so desires. Title is everything, you can sell on item you don't actually own but title never passes to the 'new owner' it remains with the actual owner. Presumably the Mercedes has no finance attached to the car, but I suspect AC would have done a simple HPI search to check this. I think the sale stands and they will have trouble reversing the process if you don't want to. AC are known to be a bit canny and maybe they think they have overpaid and wish to reverse the deal. Tough luck on them. If you are happy you are on firm ground tell them to jog on! I hardly think they are going to enter into an expensive legal suit for such a fairly simple matter. Citizens Advice will advise, as stated already. Refrain from getting the lawyers involved at this stage, they are the only ones who win generally.

Good luck. Cheers Concrete