how to choose a solicitor for probate and costs

Mousehole123

For various reasons  I/ we will be employing a solicitor to apply for probate rather than DIY 
I am joint executor of a potentially complex will and the other joint executor is in my opinion biased  and not completely trustworthy. 
We are both equal  beneficiaries with another party, but only we two are joint executors.. There are no debts. 

A few questions please...
How to choose a solicitor... when no one is local to deceased home and has no affliliation to a particular practice. 
 I think i would prefer a neutral solicitor  anyway. What key things are good to look for .... have no personal recommendations currently. 
Cost? do they charge a percentage of estate  or set fees.  Estate probably worth 1m ish and some properties involved.

I / we dont want to be ripped off but would be interested in a rough figure of costs to prepare me/ us. 

I have made an appointment with a solicitor next week to have a chat and wanted some ideas of what to ask beforehand. 

thanks in advance. 

Keep_pedalling

With several properties and IHT involved  it’s going to going to be expensive and certainly not something that will be done for a fixed fee, it will either be charged at an hourly rate of a percentage of the estate. The latter is likely to be the most expensive option but with the former you won’t know the cost until the job is finished.

You certainly should choose a solicitor who is local to the properties.

Nearlyold

We're dealing with a similar value Estate, only one property but with Investments all over the place including South Africa (notorious for administrative hurdles), paperwork generally disorganised too. Solicitor estimate is £600 + VAT for probate application. Ditto cost for IHT Forms then 30 expected hours for administration - £8850 + VAT. No idea if that's competitive or not, I did contemplate doing it myself and made a start but soon realised (though I could probably have managed) it was going to take way too many hours of my time.

msb1234

To add to the above, you will need to do some of the legwork yourself in order to collect all the information that whoever is handling probate will need! 
From what I’ve read on here, utilising a solicitor may well mean that the estate will still be being sorted out a couple of years from now.

Nearlyold

msb1234 said:

To add to the above, you will need to do some of the legwork yourself in order to collect all the information that whoever is handling probate will need! 
From what I’ve read on here, utilising a solicitor may well mean that the estate will still be being sorted out a couple of years from now.

Yes you're right should have mentioned that's the estimated costs after I'd spent a solid couple of weeks going through piles of paperwork to try and get some idea of what was "live" and what was historic plus creating a spreadsheet and a folder to hand over to the solicitor.

Daniel54

As others have said,using a solicitor does not mean that  the executors  to do not have leg work themselves.That’s just the way it is and does help to control costs.

Certainly I think you need a neutral solicitor

I am co- executor on quite a large and complex estate.We are paying by the hour but were given estimated costs split between up to probate and then separately for distribution ( which is complicated in our case)

On an estate of £1.7m we were quoted an estimate of £20k but I reckon we will probably overshoot,hopefully by not too much

But for various reasons we could not have done without a solicitor,so I am happy to think we are acting on behalf of the the beneficiaries

if there are properties to be sold it might also be worth thinking about choosing a solicitor that you would be happy to conveyance those properties as well.

Pennylane

Not sure what the answer is to be honest.  I had to find a solicitor specialising in wills, probate etc and thought I had because their website said he had years of experience but he was pretty hopeless. The estate was nowhere near what yours is worth so it is very important that you pick a good one. 

poppystar

Did the deceased have a solicitor who they used for drawing up the Will and/or dealing with things to do with the properties? This might be a useful starting point.

TonyMMM

Employing a solicitor will be costly and probably cause the process to take much longer then necessary but, in some cases, where the estate is complex or there is potential for dispute it may well be wise to do so. As mentioned already - you will probably end up doing a lot of the leg work for them in any case.

Last solicitor I asked for a quote for probate work wanted to charge their hourly rate ( a lot) PLUS 2% of the estate value..... I declined.