Solicitors and my deposit

dfarry

The thing is what about when a solicitor holds ANY money prior to completion does that also attract interest?

My deposit is basically coming up through the chain, but my solicitor is sitting on around £12500 of disbursements and stamp duty that will now not be need for completion until about 3 weeks time (we had been supposed to exchange and complete last week but it never happened because of problems further down the chain).

clutton_2

just ask him/her - i have had interest paid to me on several occasions by a solicitor when the conveyancing took far longer than we had realised.

Bossyboots

dfarry wrote:

The thing is what about when a solicitor holds ANY money prior to completion does that also attract interest?

My deposit is basically coming up through the chain, but my solicitor is sitting on around £12500 of disbursements and stamp duty that will now not be need for completion until about 3 weeks time (we had been supposed to exchange and complete last week but it never happened because of problems further down the chain).

It applies to any money held that is yours which, until the disbursements are due or you receive a bill, is anything the solicitor is holding subject to the following rule which I have lifted from the thread on here which was started by you.

Rule 24 of the Solicitors Accounts Rules state -

When a solicitor holds money in a general client account for a client
he must account to the client for a sum in lieu of interest

A solicitor is not required to pay a sum in lieu

a. if the amount calculated is 20.00 or less
b. If the solicitor holds a sum of money not exceeding the amount shown in the left hand column below for a time not exceeding the period indicated in the right hand column

Amount Time

1000.00 8 weeks
2000.00 4 weeks
10000.00 2 weeks
20000.00 1 week

dfarry

Thanks...

I guess the thread was my whinging one about losing interest :rotfl:

This time last week I didn't think it would be a problem, but now I have no idea when things will end.

I have received a statement from them and on that basis I paid the money prior to exchange as insisted by them. In the meantime my actual redemption amount of my current mortgage has dropped by a few 100 pounds so at some point my mortgage account will be in credit or the solicitor will request a new redemption figure and pay the difference back to me plus any interest due if the two week period is exceeded I guess.

silvercar

On the interest point, most people pay to their solicitor the stamp duty fee which is not due to IR until 28 days after completion. Should solicitors be paying their clients the interest on that money?

MegS

Where I work we pay the Stamp Duty on the day of completion (and we don't charge extra for doing the form which is done online). The only money that is then left over is the Land Registry fee which obviously will be paid when we get the SDLT certificate back from IR and sent with the registration. BTW BarmyBubba if you were only two weeks into instructing the solicitor you could have gone elsewhere, usually the contract papers are only just being received from the seller's solicitors by then and (unless you had instructed otherwise) no searches would have been done. At least you will know for next time.

BarmyBubba

I aint gonna be moving for years. I dread to think what hassle it is when part of a chain.

BarmyBubba

Seller got in touch this morning. His solicitor has received the settlement figure and everything looks set to go.

Emailed my solicitor at 10am (had had been told that contracts were ready to exchange), he read my email at 10.40 and I have yet to hear from him. Am I being impatient or should I ring him?

Bargain_Rzl

Bossyboots wrote:

hjb123 wrote:

Whats the first?!(most stressful thing on this earth)

I think it's divorce.

Actually I seem to remember somebody telling me that no.1 is the death of your spouse.

Bossyboots

Bargain_Rzl wrote:

Actually I seem to remember somebody telling me that no.1 is the death of your spouse.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,8122-1618115,00.html