Can Legal costs be reclaimed for family disputed will

Jude57

SpanishLady1 said:

PennyLane. Thanks for your thoughts. 

I would still love to hear if anyone has experience of a similar situation. I have a Citizens Advice Bureau appt next week which I am hoping will help. 

I'm not sure what advice an unqualified (as in, not qualified in the law) person at CAB can offer. Although you've said the solicitor who defended the claim has said you can't use the estate to pay your costs due to one beneficiary 'walking away', did you not say there was a formal agreement, signed by all parties, when you appointed the second solicitor? As @TBagpuss has advised, get a written explanation from this solicitor as to why they're disregarding that, although of course it depends entirely on the terms of that agreement and whether it can be enforced.

doodling

Hi,

You need to be clear who has spent the money, is it the executor in the course of administering the estate or is it some other party/parties?

If it is the executor who has spent the money in the administration of the estate then, assuming those costs are reasonable then they can be deducted from the value of the estate before it is distributed.

On the face of it, it sounds like the expense was reasonable as the party challenging the will withdrew and consequently all beneficiaries benefitted from the correct execution of the will.  The legal expenses are therefore a cost of administering the estate and should be deducted before distribution occurs.

To be blunt  what do you expect to happen if the executor distributes the will on the above basis?  Is there going to be a another legal challenge which will reduce everyone's inheritance further?

Of course, if the challenge was funded by beneficiaries rather than the executor then the advice you have received is correct, only those beneficiaries who agreed to fund the action ahould pay.

I think that this issue is driven by confusion as to which hat the executor has been wearing.

Ultimately, what does the executor's legal advisor say?

theoretica

Seems to me that the way to word it would be that the executor was defending the estate - so spending the estate's money.  As the estate didn't have money easily available at that time, some of the siblings paid the bills - lending money in to the estate, which is now a debt to be repaid, before what remains is divided among all beneficiaries as the will says.

Snuggles

mjm3346 said:

They didn't want to incur any more expenses and withdrew from the action so why should they have to pay any costs that occurred after that? 

Because, if these costs had not been incurred, they may have ended up with no inheritance at all? It sounds as though the executors had no choice but to take legal action in order to be able to carry out the will. They've reached a settlement, avoiding going to court, which would probably have wiped out the estate.

If those legal fees were essential in securing the inheritance for all the beneficiaries, I can't understand why they wouldn't come out of the estate before distribution, unless there is more to this than has been explained.