Legal Advice...conveyancing

jatwap1

Morning all!

I would appreciate some legal advice from those of you who may be 'in the know' or able to point me in the right direction!

I sold my property and bought a new property over a months ago (Scottish sale and purchase). My solicitor who carried out the legal bits of the sale and purchase sent me a letter following our move (move date 4th August 2006) to confirm all transactions which had taken place (including his fees, etc) and issued a cheque for the remaining monies associated with the profit from the sale of my previous property.

Subsequently, (7 weeks and 1 day to be exact!) I have now received a letter for my solicitor advising that they had mistakenly omitted to include the stamp duty fees from the transaction log and requesting that we now send a cheque for the outstanding amount (i.e. over £2000!!)

I wanted to know where I stood legally - my wife and I had legitmately asssumed that all monies had been collected and the matter was closed!

Any help/advice greatly appreciated!

clutton_2

there is another extremely similar thread on here at present, sorry i dont know the title, but - folks seem to think that you will have to pay.

silvercar

You willhave to pay as the charge is legitimate. if you can show that the money has already been spent then you may be able to pay in instalments. You could possibly ask for compensation, but I'm talking about a bunch of flowers or £25 not writing off the charge.

Debt_Free_Chick

The general position in law is that you are not entitled to benefit from a mistake. You should expect to be in the position you were in, had the mistake not been made. If the mistake had not been made, you wouldn't have £2,000 and the stamp duty would have been paid .... so you have no option but to pay-up - sorry.

The only exception to the above is if you can demonstrate that you substantially changed your financial position based on the incorrect information e.g. you entered into a financial commitment, on the basis that the £2k was yours to do with, as you wished. You would have to demonstrate that you had, effectively, spent the money and no longer had it. Note, however, that if you used the money to acquire an asset, you would be expected to sell it and get some or all of the money back.

In short - you have to pay it.

jatwap

Thanks for the advice all - I had thought this would be the case! I'm going to call my solicitor and try to negotiate the total sum payable (on the basis that they have, in my eyes, made a real !!!!-up and it's took them 7 weeks to notify me!)

What do you think?...

Will my solicitor 'have a heart' / negotiate on the costs? - assuming that he doesn't need to do anything legally (which I accept appears to be the case!), I would have thought that he should be able to be held to account in some respect for the accuracte and proper conclusion to my legal affairs?

cattie

Don't forget that you've had the benefit of the £2000 over the past 7weeks. If it's in the bank it would have earned you a small amount of interest in a high paying account.

Didn't you check your completion statement after the sale & purchase, or don't you have those in Scotland? Usually the stamp duty is one of the higher charges so your bill from the solicitor must have been for an amount lower than you expected?

Bossyboots

cattie wrote:

Don't forget that you've had the benefit of the £2000 over the past 7weeks. If it's in the bank it would have earned you a small amount of interest in a high paying account.

Didn't you check your completion statement after the sale & purchase, or don't you have those in Scotland? Usually the stamp duty is one of the higher charges so your bill from the solicitor must have been for an amount lower than you expected?

The completion statement also occurred to me but I wasn't sure if they had them in Scotland either.

The solicitor may well demand full payment now as they will have had to make up the deficiency in their client account from their own funds until it is paid. For this reason I find it strange that it took them so long to uncover as their system should have alerted them to the fact that there was insufficient money on the client ledger to meet the cheques that needed writing.

jatwap

Bossyboots wrote:

The completion statement also occurred to me but I wasn't sure if they had them in Scotland either.

The solicitor may well demand full payment now as they will have had to make up the deficiency in their client account from their own funds until it is paid. For this reason I find it strange that it took them so long to uncover as their system should have alerted them to the fact that there was insufficient money on the client ledger to meet the cheques that needed writing.

Yes, you are quite right - we should have noticed the ommission ourselves - to be honest, we knew roughly how much we were expecting and it was in that ballpark so we never thought more about it (we placed our trust in our solicitor being able to calculate accurately!) What I am disputing is not whether or not I need to pay (it's clear from comments above that I do need to pay) but I really grudge paying over £1000 in solicitors fees for them to make mistakes which are not brought to my attention until several weeks down the line...boo-hoo!!! I guess I'm on to plums and will just need to copugh up!