Probate : 16 weeks and counting

uknick

junebaby said:

They queried the will because it wasn’t bound and was on single sheets. 

They actually attached the will to the witness statement and asked them to confirm that it was what they had put their signature to. 

In my opinion they could have requested this information at the scanning stage. Not 17 weeks later and only after I had chased it. 

Thanks for that.  The probate I'm involved with had a will printed on 2 different coloured paper and at least one missing paragraph.  But, probate was still approved.  It did take 30 weeks though.   

lisyloo

uknick said:

junebaby said:

They queried the will because it wasn’t bound and was on single sheets. 

They actually attached the will to the witness statement and asked them to confirm that it was what they had put their signature to. 

In my opinion they could have requested this information at the scanning stage. Not 17 weeks later and only after I had chased it. 

Thanks for that.  The probate I'm involved with had a will printed on 2 different coloured paper and at least one missing paragraph.  But, probate was still approved.  It did take 30 weeks though.   

It may depend on the individual looking at the case.
We had a will with the witnesses signed in CAPS. They were both deceased.
DH had to sign an affadavit (not sure of spelling).
Was all a bit OTT when the will was the same as the intestacy laws anyway (2 children).
I suspect it varies when it down to human judgement.

lisyloo

We’ve been granted probate for 2 estates.
10 weeks from 6/3

BooJewels

That's good news @lisyloo My paper grants arrived less than 48 hours after getting the email to say it had been granted.  It's a fabulous weight off to have it done.

oglop

am i right to be !!!!!! off at this?

- grant of probate was received by solicitor
- she sent it to the bank. i checked the HSBC website. it says it usually only takes "up to two weeks" before accounts are unfrozen. she previously said it sometimes takes a little over, but not usually
- two weeks have now passed. she has now said (paraphrasing) "yeah, it takes a few weeks. i will put a task in to chase it next week. also, i'm on annual leave next week, so i will have to do it when i'm back in the office on june 5th"

sounds like she has no urgency on my behalf and isn't doing her job properly. what am i paying her thousand of pounds for, exactly?

tooldle

Two ways to look at everything I suppose. You can be mad at the solicitor but to be fair actions of the bank are outside their control. You could get mad at the bank, or you could just say ‘you know what, things are moving forwards and there is a good chance the bank will have acted by the time solicitor returns from their annual leave. You can also take comfort in a calendar reminder having been set, to chase up should things not have moved by the time solicitor returns’ . 

Essentially you are paying for knowledge and no how, and nothing more.

oglop

i wouldn't be so aggrieved if i didn't feel like she was constantly dragging her feet. other users on here have said banks were slow to release funds, but managed to resolve it quickly (within a day or so) with a couple of extra phone calls. this should be the bare minimum for such an expensive service! 

i'd also be more appeased if there was a single time where she emailed me first for updates rather than me chasing, chasing, chasing to get a modicom of information out of her. the only time she was ever proactive was when i had to complain about how she wasn't doing what she said she'd do!

this whole process has taken 42 weeks for me so far. now, it will have been 10 months from applying for grant of probate to receiving funds. can anyone else on this forum beat that? the only knowledge and know-how i've gotten is to never, ever use solicitors if you can avoid it. 

anyway, rant over. i am just so, so sick of this

tooldle

I dealt with my dad’s estate and finalised it after 14 months. I’m proactive so no slouching on my account. It takes time and sometimes it takes a lot of time and you have to accept that you cannot control how fast other organisations process their parts. I was unlucky enough to have to deal with a financial institution who not only took an age, kept sending me money laundering forms despite the funds not going anywhere near my account and then they informed the company to whom the funds were to be transferred that I, had changed my mind about transferring. It was a six figure sum so not insignificant. I complained and got a small settlement for the beneficiary. I had another company who kept insisting on speaking to the account holder. A death cert wasn’t enough for them lol. All this and not a penny for myself, everything went to a family member.

It might help to remember, time is money for solicitors. If the solicitor called you to ‘inform’ of every step and non progress, the overall cost would rise. Check the terms of your agreement and if the solicitor is in breach, complain.

poppystar

tooldle said:

I dealt with my dad’s estate and finalised it after 14 months. I’m proactive so no slouching on my account. It takes time and sometimes it takes a lot of time and you have to accept that you cannot control how fast other organisations process their parts. I was unlucky enough to have to deal with a financial institution who not only took an age, kept sending me money laundering forms despite the funds not going anywhere near my account and then they informed the company to whom the funds were to be transferred that I, had changed my mind about transferring. It was a six figure sum so not insignificant. I complained and got a small settlement for the beneficiary. I had another company who kept insisting on speaking to the account holder. A death cert wasn’t enough for them lol. All this and not a penny for myself, everything went to a family member.

It might help to remember, time is money for solicitors. If the solicitor called you to ‘inform’ of every step and non progress, the overall cost would rise. Check the terms of your agreement and if the solicitor is in breach, complain.

I complained to one of the banks about what they had done (in my case they couldn’t wait to hand over money and cancel every standing order on the joint account that remained open!). They wrote a letter apologising but then said that if we weren’t satisfied then deceased name must contact them himself! And that was their bereavement department🙄. 

Certainly took over a year to execute it all so if there had been non executor beneficiaries they would have been waiting at least that long.

oglop

tooldle said:

I dealt with my dad’s estate and finalised it after 14 months. I’m proactive so no slouching on my account. It takes time and sometimes it takes a lot of time and you have to accept that you cannot control how fast other organisations process their parts. I was unlucky enough to have to deal with a financial institution who not only took an age, kept sending me money laundering forms despite the funds not going anywhere near my account and then they informed the company to whom the funds were to be transferred that I, had changed my mind about transferring. It was a six figure sum so not insignificant. I complained and got a small settlement for the beneficiary. I had another company who kept insisting on speaking to the account holder. A death cert wasn’t enough for them lol. All this and not a penny for myself, everything went to a family member.

It might help to remember, time is money for solicitors. If the solicitor called you to ‘inform’ of every step and non progress, the overall cost would rise. Check the terms of your agreement and if the solicitor is in breach, complain.

that's grim. i'll still have to wait another 3 months until everything is settled, too, and can only expect an interim payment until then. so not far off 14 months. argh

i think what is particularly galling is how much slower the process is when using a solicitor. i (foolishly) thought at first that it would be quicker and more streamlined using a solicitor rather than doing probate myself, which couldn't be further from the truth. it seems that solicitors use antiquated, slower probate processes, compared to being able to file everything digitally yourself. 

and regarding the "time is money" thing: yes. i feel the problem is that solictors take on far too many cases to try and maximise profits but can't keep on top of them all. so, everything takes longer, there's inadeqate communication, and more mistakes happen. if i did that in my job, i'd be fired. yet, it seems par for the course with solicitors. 

finally, i think i'm just not used to how slow things are in the uk. where i live now, my (non-uk) wife went through a similar process with her late dad, and everything was sorted within a few weeks, if that. i'm not sure why everything takes months on end in the uk. it's like everything is broken

oh well. thanks for the comment anyway. it's nice to know it's not *just* me going through all of this!