solicitor asking for money 2 years after selling house

askmrjames

Hello everyone,

This is a weird one. We sold our house 2 years ago and received a letter a few days ago from the solicitor who handled the sale. They said at the time of sale an insurance policy should have been taken out as some windows were installed by a FENSA installer and that an indemnity should be offered to the new buyer.

This wasnt taken out by the solicitors, not added to my bill and then never paid.

So they then send me a letter saying the house buyer has asked about the windows - the solicitor has paid the money for the policy and is now asking me to reimburse them.

I'm a little peeved as obviously not involved in the process dont know if the windows being in question were the ones that needed the certificate or how they can request monies almost 2 years after the transaction has been completed.

Does anyone know where I stand with this?

Thanks in advance for your help!

Spicy_McHaggis

You need to speak to a solicitor.

hollydays

askmrjames wrote: »

Hello everyone,

This is a weird one. We sold our house 2 years ago and received a letter a few days ago from the solicitor who handled the sale. They said at the time of sale an insurance policy should have been taken out as some windows were installed by a FENSA installer and that an indemnity should be offered to the new buyer.

This wasnt taken out by the solicitors, not added to my bill and then never paid.

So they then send me a letter saying the house buyer has asked about the windows - the solicitor has paid the money for the policy and is now asking me to reimburse them.

I'm a little peeved as obviously not involved in the process dont know if the windows being in question were the ones that needed the certificate or how they can request monies almost 2 years after the transaction has been completed.

Does anyone know where I stand with this?

Thanks in advance for your help!

If you don't know if the windows were the ones that needed the certificate, ask him for more detail.

Crazy_Jamie

Just from reading the post it seems extremely odd to me that a solicitor would pay sounds like an (alleged) personal liability on your part and then pursue you for the money in a situation where they do not and have not acted for you for some time. There is certainly a potential point to be raised as to whether or not you actually have any liability to pay the money back to them.

The other potential further issue that I see is that if this policy should have been taken out at the time and was not, the blame for that could potentially fall on your solicitor in any event. If the solicitor not taking that out was negligent on their part, your liability would only extend in any event to the cost of the policy and not the cost of the windows, assuming of course that the windows cost more now than the policy would have then.

However, all I am doing is making observations based on my knowledge and experience of unrelated areas of law. In the absence of there being a conveyancing specialist on this site, you need to go to a solicitor who has such experience to take advice. It's clearly a specialist situation and one that you will likely not be able to gain a definitive solution to on a site such as this.

ThumbRemote

Dear Solicitors,

I note that you acknowledge your failure to correctly handle the sale of my house in 2013, namely your omission to ensure the buyers received the FENSA certificate. As this was your error, I do not see that I should have to pay the indemnity insurance costs to rectify it.


Yours sincerely

Mr James

askmrjames

thankyou everyone for your replies, I will look at the letter and send it to them.
Thankyou again

robatwork

Do pop back with an update in a week or two.