Grant of Probate

horse99

Buying a flat - deceased estate.

Three months into process. Nearing signing of contract.

Decided to be extra cautious and check the Grant of Probate + Will myself to be 100% certain executor had the required authority.

Everything is fine apart from.......

The flat number on the grant of probate is wrong. It says 57 when it shoud be 58.

Do I need to tell my solicitor?

My thoughts are technically the executor does not have the right to sell the flat or dispose of the estate.

The will does state the correct address.

Please help/advise.

AnotherJoe

Do I need to tell my solicitor?

Absolutely!!

Its seemingly a mistake that's eluded everyone. Get it corrected, which could take some time, because otherwise when it comes to resale its possible it will cause issues if a sharp eyed solicitor spots it then and it will be far harder to get the sellers to correct it years down the line. Now they have a massive incentive to chase it up.

Flugelhorn

actually the details on the grant of probate will just be the address of the deceased individual + address of the executor. It does not indicate the address of any property that could be in the estate.
Quite likely to be wrong in this case but there is always the possibility that the deceased owned the 2 flats??

AnotherJoe

Good point, Ive just looked at my mums grant of probate and it does indeed have her address on it not any property addresses, however on the balance of probabilities its very likely that it is indeed one and the same place. I'm not sure what the issue might be then, so I'd definitely run it by your solicitor for their advice.
It does at least look as if, once the sale is done then on a subsequent sale there would be no backtracking to the grant of probate so no one is going to raise it as an issue on resale.

davidmcn

The question is really whether it's an error which the Land Registry will care about. By all means point it out to your solicitor and see what they think.

Thrugelmir

Solicitor acting on behalf of the vendor(s) will be on top of this. They won't act on instructions without confirming that everything is in order.

AnotherJoe

Thrugelmir wrote: »

Solicitor acting on behalf of the vendor(s) will be on top of this. They won't act on instructions without confirming that everything is in order.

Unless they missed it. The very first house I bought in 1980-something, had an error in the legal documentation dating back to the mid 1960's (the house was built around 1900) and my solicitor insisted on getting that changed. It was self evidently a typo, it was something along the lines of a purchase in say 1965 but had 1865 eg before the house was built.

My point being, the house had been sold several times between 1965 and 1980. And all those solicitors had missed this. So might the vendors solicitor in this case.

Thrugelmir

AnotherJoe wrote: »

My point being, the house had been sold several times between 1965 and 1980. And all those solicitors had missed this. So might the vendors solicitor in this case.

Dealt with my late mothers estate earlier this year. Solicitors weren't going to transfer a property just because I asked them too.

Flugelhorn

Probate just shows the last address of the individual - say they had been in the care home for > 6 months then it could be the care home. They could also have several properties.
The probate enable the executor to sell / transfer or whatever the will says property in the estate - so presume the solicitor has to prove that the particular property that is being sold belonged to the deceased etc and the executor has probate for that person.

Tom99

[FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]Download the leasehold title to No 58, it should be in the name of the deceased, in which case everything should be fine.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]Still draw it to the attention of your solicitor but a copy of probate is not something either you or your solicitor would normally have, in which case the mistake would go un-noticed.[/FONT]

HHarry

It shouldn't be a problem - the grant I have for my Mum shows her home address, but it still gives me authority to sell her second property.