Money held by solicitor - interest?? UPDATE!!!!

Kaz2904

OMG I thought this when we paid our £14k deposit 2yrs ago and din't move for months. I suspect we're too late but chase it down and get it back!

MarkyMarkD

Two years is no way too late. Ask you solicitor for the interest, Kaz2904.

Woby_Tide

silvercar wrote: »

Assume they get about 4%, 65k for two months would be around £433 and £20k for 1 month about £67, so your looking at £500.

Thats a big assumption though, I'd have thought most business accounts wouldn't offer anything close to that sort of interest in the main though?

silvercar

Woby_Tide wrote: »

Thats a big assumption though, I'd have thought most business accounts wouldn't offer anything close to that sort of interest in the main though?

Its not a general business account, its a solicitor's client account. These accounts are set up to hold large tranches of money.

The rate I was quoting was from a discussion I had with my solicitor about a year ago, 90% sure he said something like base rate less half a per cent, happy to be corrected.

helping_hubby

Our solicitor has also not returned interest and they have held £18000 over about 10 weeks. We've only just got our money back after the sale fell through, so I shall also call to ask today. Thanks.

denise38

We are in process of selling and buying a plot of land. We are going into rented property and we don't need to hand over money for plot till we have planning permission. Had a conversation with our solicitor last week and she said that unless it was only going to be a couple of days in between receiving house money and having to pay plot money she would be give us the profit from our house minus her costs for selling. Then nearer the time she would ask for plot money plus buying costs. She said that they would get next to nothing on interest on the money and we would be better to put it in our own savings account then pay to have money transferred to them when needed.
Big difference from solicitor we used last time who basically kept a hold of our money and gave us no interest.
We didn't have to ask about the money she went out of her way to tell us. Thumbs up for our solicitor!!!

A_Nice_Englishman

FWIW, my solicotor paid 2% interest on about £140K held for 21 days

jordan_gibson

Well Solicitor has replied basically telling me to take a long walk of a short pier (even with the law society involved).

I'm not prepared to bend over and drop my trousers on this so will keep going just because it feels so unfair that they must be making an absolute fortune from this!

Richard_Webster

I bank with Lloyds TSB and have a Clients Call Account where all my client money lives. They pay tiered interest dependent on the overall amount and my understandings is that it is fair and reasonable for me to account to clients on the basis of the interest that would have been received had the money been in a separate account paying the same tiers of interest. For me at the moment sums up to £50K the rate is 3.0% and from there up to £100K is 3.05%.

This works out at about £375 (which is gross by the way so you should pay tax on it). If the solicitors are silly enough not to have an interest bearing account for client funds then I cannot really see why you should suffer. Their bank's 7 day interest account (which is the theoretical standard that should be applied) may pay different rates so there is some scope for argument about the precise rate to be applied, but you should get substantially more than that offered.

You need to make a formal complaint to them and ask that it is dealt with using the firm's complaints' procedure which should be provided to you. If you exhaust their own internal system, then you can go to the Legal Complaints Board.

As a conveyancing solicitor I believe the information given in the post to be useful but I accept no liability except to fee-paying clients.

jordan_gibson

Richard_Webster wrote: »

I bank with Lloyds TSB and have a Clients Call Account where all my client money lives. They pay tiered interest dependent on the overall amount and my understandings is that it is fair and reasonable for me to account to clients on the basis of the interest that would have been received had the money been in a separate account paying the same tiers of interest. For me at the moment sums up to £50K the rate is 3.0% and from there up to £100K is 3.05%.

This works out at about £375 (which is gross by the way so you should pay tax on it). If the solicitors are silly enough not to have an interest bearing account for client funds then I cannot really see why you should suffer. Their bank's 7 day interest account (which is the theoretical standard that should be applied) may pay different rates so there is some scope for argument about the precise rate to be applied, but you should get substantially more than that offered.

You need to make a formal complaint to them and ask that it is dealt with using the firm's complaints' procedure which should be provided to you. If you exhaust their own internal system, then you can go to the Legal Complaints Board.

As a conveyancing solicitor I believe the information given in the post to be useful but I accept no liability except to fee-paying clients.

Thanks Richard. I made a formal complaint to the solicitor (as advised to do by the Law Society) and his response was that £36 was pretty much the most I was going to get. He also said that I would be charged fees for him paying this interest for him and his staff 'administrating' the account! He basically made it sound like I was going to have to pay up rather than him! He does have a client's account (as he has already sent me a cheque drawn on this account) and in my last response to him mentioned the exact fact that I would be very surprised if this account was not interest bearing to some extent.

I'm awaiting his reply and the Law Society said to just get back to them if the Solicitor does not come back with a satisfactory answer.