Any legal eagles here?

donnaessex

Hi MSE's!

Bit of a tricky one so I'll try to keep it as simple as possible.

Background of it is our estate agents and solicitors are owned by the same man and they work out of the same offices.

In February we moved house - we exchanged and completed on the same day. We sold our house to FTBs and we moved into an empty house.

We received a preliminary completion statement 2 weeks before we moved and on the day before we moved, we received the final fcompletion statement from our solicitors and paid the money we needed to pay that wasnt covered by the mortgage etc.

On the day of the move, my solicitor called me to tell me that we had exchanged, and that he apologises but he made a mistake on the completion statement and we owed him £391. I told him I didnt have £391 handy on that day (understandably we were up to our eyes in boxes etc) and he agreed to give me 6 weeks to pay. He said he thought we had taken the free legal package from the estate agents, but I'd actually signed up for the discounted version instead.

When the EA came to see us initially, he told us that there was a partnership between the two companies and you got a better deal if you used them both for the sale/purchase, which we did.

I have just looked at a copy of the contract we signed. It states:

ESTATE AGENT will pay your legal costs in respect of both the sale of the property and purchase of any new property (excluding any costs or fees in respect of leasehold management packs and disbursements) at a discounted rate of £400+VAT for each transaction, which will be added to your 1.25% agency fee in your completion statement. This provision of legal fee payment is based solely upon the conveyance being carried out and completed by ESTATE AGENT SOLICITORS. (we will not pay nor contribute toward any legal or other costs incurred in respect of any purchase of property).

I cant work out if the contract says they will pay or if we will? What does that first line mean? Do we have to pay? They wont give me an answer re the "free legal service" the solicitor told me about.

Thanks in advance - any other info you need, please let me know.

seabright

It doesn't make sense to me at all -sorry. And I've read some very badly worded documents in my time!

If EA is paying your fees, it doesn't matter what the discounted rate is and there will be nothing to add to the completion statement.

Maybe they mean that thay'll pay the first £400 + VAT of the fees and the balance will be added on to the completion statement?

donnaessex

seabright wrote: »

It doesn't make sense to me at all -sorry. And I've read some very badly worded documents in my time!

If EA is paying your fees, it doesn't matter what the discounted rate is and there will be nothing to add to the completion statement.

Maybe they mean that thay'll pay the first £400 + VAT of the fees and the balance will be added on to the completion statement?

Thanks Seabright. I did a law degree many moons ago so I'm pretty sure I'd be au fait with contract clauses but this has me stumped too!

Do you think I should argue my case and say no? The first part of the first line clearly states that the Estate Agent will pay the fees, but then goes on about the discounted rate being added to the completion statement, which it wasnt...

tyllwyd

I read it as saying that the legal fees are £400+VAT (which is a discounted rate) but instead of you paying the solicitor directly the estate agent will pay it on your behalf but it will be added on to the fee that you pay to the estate agent. I can't see why you would owe the solicitor - I'd have thought you owed the estate agent. And why would it be less than £400, rather than £400+ VAT (unless the idea was that you would pay the estate agent £400+VAT but he would only pay the solicitor £391 and keep the difference?)

donnaessex

tyllwyd wrote: »

I read it as saying that the legal fees are £400+VAT (which is a discounted rate) but instead of you paying the solicitor directly the estate agent will pay it on your behalf but it will be added on to the fee that you pay to the estate agent.

Thanks Tyllwyd. But I didnt have to pay the EA anything? I paid everything to the solicitor to pay out on my behalf (inc the EA fee) the day before completion?

This is just getting more confusing! What would you do?

tyllwyd

donnaessex wrote: »

Thanks Tyllwyd. But I didnt have to pay the EA anything? I paid everything to the solicitor to pay out on my behalf (inc the EA fee) the day before completion?

This is just getting more confusing! What would you do?

I guess you did pay the estate agent, in that the solicitor was holding your money in his client account, and paying it to the estate agent on your behalf.

I don't know (I'm not a lawyer!) - I've moved a few times & we've never had an arrangement like this. I think it would be perfectly reasonable to ask to see a revised completion statement to show you exactly where this figure has come from.

Did you need the solicitors to do any extra work, which was additional to the normal conveyancing?

donnaessex

tyllwyd wrote: »

I guess you did pay the estate agent, in that the solicitor was holding your money in his client account, and paying it to the estate agent on your behalf.

I don't know (I'm not a lawyer!) - I've moved a few times & we've never had an arrangement like this. I think it would be perfectly reasonable to ask to see a revised completion statement to show you exactly where this figure has come from.

Did you need the solicitors to do any extra work, which was additional to the normal conveyancing?

Thanks for your reply. No, we didnt need anything out of the normal remit, apart from a few searches which were clearly detailed on the completion statement under separate entries.

clutton_2

ask for a new completion statement - see if that makes it clearer