Shocked at solicitor itemised bill

konark

Dear OP, I have just spent 6 minutes 'perusing' this thread.

Please send me £23

MidsLife

I thought being charged £16 for six minutes of work by my solicitor was unreasonable, that!!!8217;s even worse!

Can they legally charge you when you have to email them to chase for an update because they!!!8217;ve not provided any for a month and fail to update their online tracker?

Lucy5781

Our mother made solicitors her executors. So we agreed the fixed fee first to avoid steadily climbing rates.

Possibly why it took them five months to get the house on the market after we cleared it with six weeks... but it means they're not itemising costs.

Estate is worth almost £400k so their quote of £4k, which was the value of her car, now sold, by my brother, within three months... was fine with us.

Frustrating overall though, my father in law is an accountant and my brother's mother in law has been a legal secretary at a probate solicitors for over 30 years. Would have been fine doing it ourselves but mum got too ill to get will changed when we realised what she'd done.

Yorkshireman99

ProStuart wrote: »

When I first met with the solicitors, they said it may cost £3-5k for the handling of the estate. I did push them for a more accurate estimate but they said they couldn't but that their services were charged hourly.


I was never given the option to ask what they should/should not do. They told me that as they were the executors they would be doing everything.

You can ask for the bill to be formally reviewed by the court. You just have to ask them.

LarryLancaster

Sounds like pretty good value to me! Someone I know was named in a will that was administered by a solicitor as the deceased had no children so appointed her solicitor to administer her estate (which included selling her house worth around £300k).



The solicitors' bill for probate and managing the house sale came to something like £20k.

LobsterMemory

To be honest, *if* you accept that solicitors' charges of £100-£200 per hour are acceptable then it's not difficult to see how a £20k bill can result.

If lay executors were able to charge for their time then you'd probably get a similar figure as the norm - a lot of which would be for checking and double-checking you were doing the right thing. And even then getting it wrong.

The process just isn't bish, bash, bosh

Owain_Moneysaver

ProStuart wrote: »

Am I crazy to ask why the reading of a gas bill or receipt of returned documentation takes 6 minutes??????

It doesn't take the solicitor 6 minutes, but that's the unit of time they work in. (You might be surprised how many 6 minute units a productive solicitor can bill in one sixty-minute period!) The rate includes not just the solicitor's time but all the overheads of running the business including other staff, premises, IT, professional insurance, etc. £230 an hour isn't that high.

Some solicitors will quote a lower hourly rate, but they may charge a separate rate for the clerk's time, typing, photocopying etc.

getmore4less

Lucy5781 wrote: »

Our mother made solicitors her executors. So we agreed the fixed fee first to avoid steadily climbing rates.

Possibly why it took them five months to get the house on the market after we cleared it with six weeks... but it means they're not itemising costs.

Estate is worth almost £400k so their quote of £4k, which was the value of her car, now sold, by my brother, within three months... was fine with us.

Frustrating overall though, my father in law is an accountant and my brother's mother in law has been a legal secretary at a probate solicitors for over 30 years. Would have been fine doing it ourselves but mum got too ill to get will changed when we realised what she'd done.

Even with a fixed fee it is worth considering doing some stuff yourself just to make progress.

Selling a house is relatively self contained doing the legwork, picking the estate agent, valuations, negotiating the fee etc. having the solicitor just signing the paperwork can make things happen a lot quicker.

Lucy5781

getmore4less wrote: »

Even with a fixed fee it is worth considering doing some stuff yourself just to make progress.

Selling a house is relatively self contained doing the legwork, picking the estate agent, valuations, negotiating the fee etc. having the solicitor just signing the paperwork can make things happen a lot quicker.

Yes, I fully agree but between us my brother and I have four children aged three or under. He's in the middle of exchanging his own house sale and I gave birth to my second child just two months after mum passed away. My husband then had ankle repair surgery when I had a five week old newborn and is only now walking independently again eight weeks later.

It's been a rather intense five months all round.

Also the estate is 80 miles from us both, it's costing enough in petrol, food and toll charges going down there even without us managing anything.

ProStuart

Thanks for all the responses!!!


Yeah, they were named as sole executors and if I'd have known what I know now I would have renounced them and done it all myself.


When I questioned them, they said this is how the industry operates and has done so for the last 30 years.


But in my mind it doesn't make it feel like anything other than daylight robbery and simply wrong for ANY company to charge such a ridiculous fee for opening and reading a 3 line letter.