Solicitor holding proceeds from house sale

Cazzie0775

Can a solicitor hold the proceeds from the sale of a property with NO explanation? 

House completed on11th Nov, other party has agreed to cover costs as ordered by courts, on Fri 18th. ( long story, had to take difficult ex partner to court to force sale of property, that they signed and legally agreed to in a divorce settlement in 2007)

solicitors/conveyancers/ accounts dept apparently All to busy to answer my calls..

SusieT

You may be better with this in the buying and selling houses part of the forum, I have popped a notification to the forum team to move it there so that you can get helpful replies

TBagpuss

Only they can tell you for sure.
If the court costs are havng tobe paid from your ex's share of the funds then it may be that they need to get finalfiguires on those before they can pay out the balance - and if your ex was awkward that might mean that the costs have to be formally assesed which takes time. 

If you can't get through on the phone, e-mail the person dealing with the sale and cc it to wheover the complaints partner is - thre may be a good reason but a week after completion is bit of a long time to wait to find out what it is.It's also possible that different departments dealt wit hthe sale and the court process and there's a communnication issue between the two of them about who is taking responsbility for paying the money out. 

Tiglet2

Has your conveyancing solicitor sent the proceeds to a divorce solicitor?  Conveyancing solicitors cannot hold on to the sale proceeds for a lengthy time, so it is usual for one of the divorce solicitors to agree to hold the money until the split of finances has been agreed, usually by a consent order.

Was the consent order only finalised on Friday 18th?  Or were terms only agreed by you on the 18th?  The monies cannot be sent to either of you, if terms were not agreed until Friday, a week after completion.  If so, I doubt there was time to transfer the monies from Conveyancing Solicitor to Divorce Solicitor to you/your ex, bearing in mind it is now only Tuesday (two working days since Friday).

Get in touch with each solicitor tomorrow and ask.