Contacting the courts for progress on a will

AnotherJoe

Rubik wrote: »

There's so much more to estate administration than just filling in the probate or confirmation form. Not everyone is confident at completing forms, not everyone has English as a first language, some people have dyslexia, some people prefer to let someone else do the work - and don't forget that people who are facing applying for probate/confirmation are grieving because a loved one has died and the thought of having to deal with paperwork is a bit too much at that particular time.

It's not a "scam", or a scandal.

And your comments are not helpful, and especially (I would imagine) to the OP.

It's a scam and a scandal I was quoted around £2k for filling in forms I can fill in myself and did in an hour.
It's a scam that there is nothing complex in many estates but solicitors act as if the whole process Is highly complex and needs their Expertise in all cases.
It's a scam that they are told the forms are complex (because why else would you need a solicitors) when they are straightforward.

Yes not everyone is up to it but many more would be if they looked at the forms rather than assume it's awful legalese and this is why the government is moving towards making these available online, because they are straighforward for many. if they weren't they wouldnt put them online.

Yes some can't do it for the reasons you mention but many more can and we shouldn't given the impression here that throwing money at all solicitor is the default.

Yorkshireman99

AnotherJoe wrote: »

It's a scam and a scandal I was quoted around £2k for filling in forms I can fill in myself and did in an hour.
It's a scam that there is nothing complex in many estates but solicitors act as if the whole process Is highly complex and needs their Expertise in all cases.
It's a scam that they are told the forms are complex (because why else would you need a solicitors) when they are straightforward.

Yes not everyone is up to it but many more would be if they looked at the forms rather than assume it's awful legalese and this is why the government is moving towards making these available online, because they are straighforward for many. if they weren't they wouldnt put them online.

Yes some can't do it for the reasons you mention but many more can and we shouldn't given the impression here that throwing money at all solicitor is the default.

As Rubik said it is not a scam or a scandal. If you read a few of these threads you would find many people saying that it is relatively easy to DIY possibly with a bit of guidance. In any case there is much more than filling out the forms to obtain probate. The reality is that if you want professional services you have to pay for all the expertise and overheads plus of course some profit.

badmemory

It will be interesting to find out how much extra it has cost for all the incorrectly filled in forms! Because they will have charged for their errors.

Rubik

KarenT1978 wrote: »

Thank you all for your advice. Rubik your contributions in particular have been invaluable. Today thanks to your suggestion I phoned the commissary department of the Sheriff court. I was Initially wary that they would not tell me much but the upshot was they could not have been more helpful. Their representative knew my case instantly due to the number of times they have had to send incorrectly filled out forms back to my solicitors for reprocessing. They appear to be extremely scathing of the way my solicitors have conducted their business. However the good news I got from them was that my petition was granted on Friday and subject to a 3 day delay can be actioned this week.

When I started out in this process I was under the impression that if you were dealing with what is termed a large estate then you had to apoint by law solicitors to process it. Having read this thread I went back and re read the various websites explaining what is required and realise now appointing solicitors is only recommended if it’s a large estate. Although my fathers estate is termed large legally it is in total worth considerably less than £100 000. So by the time it gets split up amongst the various beneficiaries it will be nice to have but no ones life is going to be changed forever by it. I just wish with hindsight I wasn’t giving some of my dads money over to a group of solicitors for a job done extremely poorly.

Thanks again to all.

Happy to have been of some help. I'm pleased that you were able to get a good level of detail on your application.At least you now have clarity on when confirmation will be granted

You should not have to pay for the time spent correcting the solicitor's errors, so when you get a bill in, make sure it is fully itemised (it should be anyway) and go through it with a fine tooth comb to make sure that charges for error corrections haven't been included. And if they have - personally I would refuse to pay them.