Solicitors appointed themselves as executors

dzug1

RAS wrote: »

I would be inclined to ask mum exactly how much the solicitors are going to charge for their services.

No sensible solicitor will give a direct answer to that question. The best you'll get is our charges are currently £x per hour and/or y% of the estate.


They won't tell you what their charges will be in 5, 10 or more years time coz they won't know



And solicitors vary as to whether they will let you do some of the work. A sensible one would allow you to clear the house even if nothing else

Prothet_of_Doom

My nan had her head screwed on, and appointed me, as her YOUNGEST grandchild and my Dad, as her only child as executors, and told us, that if we wanted we could appoint any solicitor we wanted, to do the work if we didn't feel up for it. Because I trusted my Dad, I let him choose a solicitor, but quite frankly I could have done the job for alot less money, in half the time, without the stress that being out of control causes.
The charges were over £5K and all he had to do was close 7 building society accounts, and sell some shares in BT (sid told her to buy them). Now I'm thinking that I could need about 2 days to do that, but it would be spread over a couple of months. Instead it took 18 months.

RAS

dzug1 wrote: »

No sensible solicitor will give a direct answer to that question. The best you'll get is our charges are currently £x per hour and/or y% of the estate.

Which is precisely the answer I would expect from a sensible solicitor.

Like the OP has an idea whether the estate is 2/6 or 2.6 million NOW. But she has no idea what the value will be on death.

With those two pieces of information she can however estimate how much the charges would be if the will was executed in the near future.

Many solicitors do as john's did but I also know of one who charged £4K to execute an estate valued at £8K. He later had to explain his action to the Law Society but still got his fees.

AnnieO1234

Don't know which firm she used, but it sounds rather like having their cake and eating it.

We discussed exactly the same with mom-in-law when she had a free will done. Well she paid money for it but the promotion was it went to the hospital she works at.

Anyway as I said at the time, if when the time comes either of her sons needed to keep the house (with the others agreement of course) the could as executors themselves but by handing it to a solicitor there would be no choice at all. She thought when they sold it to her that it sounded a good idea and would reduce the burden so to speak.

But then she queried it with us, and get quickly changed the wording and put it in storage with her bank. I would recommend anyone did the same thing as it is guaranteed that the bank will be informed of your death, unlike some random law firm.

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