Possible Negligence by Executor Solicitor

50_Hertz

Grumpy_chap said:

50_Hertz said:

1) A friend left me his house in his will.

2) The will appointed a named firm of solicitors as the executors.

3) During December a water supply pipe froze,  burst and flooded the house.

4) Extensive damage has been caused. Very extensive.

5) The solicitor has informed me that the unoccupied property insurance policy, arranged by them, is refusing to pay out.

6) The insurer's reasons for non payment are; they don't pay for water escapes from supply pipes between October and April. The water should have been isolated and the system drained from October through to April. This is in the Ts & Cs, but the solicitor didn't comply with them, hence no payment.

7) The solicitors are proposing to carry out a cosmetic repair, and re-market the house. 

8) The solicitors have stated that the cosmetic repair and their (the solicitors) time handling this additional work will be charged to the estate. 

9) The plan at (8) will substantially devalue the house and substantially reduce the the residual after the repair and solicitor's additional fees have been paid.

50_Hertz said:

The solicitor has proceeded to repair the house and stated she will charge the estate for the repairs.

I have a "devils' advocate" question, but what loss has the OP suffered?

The OP inherited the house.
I assume, given the Solicitor (acting as Executor) undertook to market the house for sale, the specifics of the Will did not leave the house to the OP but the proceeds from the sale of the house.  Otherwise, the Solicitor (Executor) should, potentially, have transferred the house to the OP to do with as the OP wished.

The Solicitor (Executor) has not covered themselves with glory.
The house got damaged while being sold.
The costs of the repair were not covered by insurance so will be charged to the Estate.

The OP only says they inherited the house.
What else is in the Estate?  
Does the "residual value" (outside of all nominated bequests) have sufficient capacity to cover the costs of the repairs to the house?

It may be that the OP will still receive the house / value of the house.
The costs of repair to the house may be charged and reduce the "residual Estate" so the impact of all this is picked up by the Remaindermen, not the OP.

Hi Grumpy-Chap,

I did inherit the house, that is correct.

The house was valued at £X thousand pounds before the flood and was on the market. The deceased paid slightly more than that 6 months earlier, so £X thousand is a reasonable valuation.

A flood occurred during December 2023 as a result of a frozen water pipe. The internal damage caused is massive, in the order of £55K. As executor, the solicitor has a legal duty to safeguard the assets of the estate and if they are negligent in that duty, they are personally liable for damages. £55K is my loss so far. I suspect the flood will have devalued the house, even after the repairs, but that is not yet certain. £55K is certain.


The solicitor intends to take the £55K out of the estate, ie my inheritance. She says the house was insured, but the insurers are refusing to pay. She won't say clearly why they won't pay, just they don't cover escapes of water. It's likely because she negligently breeched the insurance Ts&Cs by not isolating the property from the water supply between October and March (very common conditions of unoccupied property insurance). One of her colleagues  alluded to this and then clammed up when I started asking question.  I can't confirm this because she is now refusing point blank to release any information regarding insurance, not even the name of the company. Hiding something? 

Legal action is prohibitively expensive (she knows this), but there are other avenues which I am currently pursuing.

But yes, I have suffered a loss of about £55K so far. Solicitors have professional indemnity insurance, but clearly she'd rather me foot the bill than make a claim. Her willingness to publicly soil herself and her profession is breathtaking, but I'm optimistic she will endure a reckoning in due course. 

Grumpy_chap

50_Hertz said:

I did inherit the house, that is correct.

The solicitor intends to take the £55K out of the estate, ie my inheritance. 

I am not being belligerent, but pursuing the "devil's advocate" line.

You have inherited the house.
What does the total Estate comprise of? 
I assume the deceased had the house plus other assets.  How much more are the other assets?
Who inherits the other assets?  
It is entirely possible that the £55k is deducted from the value of the Estate, but from the proportion after the value of the house has been distributed to yourself.  This would mean that the residuary beneficiaries suffer the loss (split between however many residuary beneficiaries there are) and not you as the beneficiary of the house.

You have also not clarified whether the Will left you the house, or left you the value of the house. 
If you were left the house, why was the Solicitor / Executor selling the house?  If you were left the house, the decision to sell or not would be yours and it may have been your decision to live in the house.
If you were left the value of the house, then the Solicitor / Executor is correctly selling the house and you get a cheque for the value of the house.

doodling

Hi,

Assuming that the OP has suffered a loss (i.e. the repair costs are being deducted from their inheritance whether it be the value of the house or some other part of the overall whole) then their only way forward in this case is getting professional legal advice from a different solicitor (probably one orientated towards litigation).

I'm surprised that the OP claims that this will be too expensive - they appear to be inheriting several hundred thousand pounds so whilst it might be "expensive", "too expensive" seems an exaggeration.

thegreenone

I'm a bit confused (not difficult). 

Does your friend's Will say "I leave to my friend, 50_Hertz, my house at No 4 Acacia Avenue"?   If so, why was the solicitor selling it?  Surely, after Probate was granted, they should have filled in the Land Registry forms and handed it over to you?  Hopefully, @SDLT_Geek will come along and help me out.

Grumpy_chap

thegreenone said:

I'm a bit confused (not difficult). 

Does your friend's Will say "I leave to my friend, 50_Hertz, my house at No 4 Acacia Avenue"?   If so, why was the solicitor selling it?  Surely, after Probate was granted, they should have filled in the Land Registry forms and handed it over to you?  Hopefully, @SDLT_Geek will come along and help me out.

Yes, the specific wording of the Will is significant.

50_Hertz

The estate consists of the house and other assets such as investments and personal items. The Will states that the house is to be sold, all other assets liquidated and added to the proceeds of the house sale and then distributed. 

I am the only beneficiary.

I have approached 3 firms of lawyers. The first stage is to obtain the insurance information so that an assessment of any potential negligence by the solicitor can be made. The cost of this is circa £9000. If negligence is identified, and litigation against the solicitor is initiated, the eventual cost could easily exceed the loss to the estate and there is no guarantee of recovering those costs, even if successful. My judgement at this stage is that this route isn't viable.

I am currently pursuing an alternative method of extracting the insurance information. If that works, I'm confident that I will have evidence of negligence and maybe the wilful fostering of a misconception. I'm sure she has lied to me in a letter regarding the insurers reasons for rejecting the claim. It just doesn't add up and it's likely this is the reason she is fighting so hard to stop me seeing the insurance policy and Ts&Cs. I guess it could potentially be career ending if it all comes out.

I know she's very worried. I have a contact in the village where the house is located. He has photographs / CCTV of her there helping to clear debris and throwing sodden plasterboard sheets into a skip. Not the behaviour of a solicitor who's comfortable with their actions. I'm trying my best to stress her and I think it's working. I'll move on an attempt to obtain the insurance when the time is right. At the moment she's taking the rope and hanging herself quite nicely.

doodling

Hi,

If you have taken legal advice then there isn't much more any of us can add but I am slightly confused as to why the existence and terms of any insurance have any relevance to the solicitors liability.

Either the solicitor has taken reasonable precautions against burst pipes or they haven't.  If they have taken reasonable precautions then they are not liable, if they haven't then they are negligent.  Whether or not an insurance policy is in place feels like a complete red herring.

Your action would be to sue the solicitor for £55k on the basis that they didn't take reasonable steps to protect the assets in their care  The success of the case would depend on the reasonability of the actions taken by the solicitor.  None of that is anything to do with any insurance.

The only reason why anyone would be interested in the insurance is if they have decided that the terms of that insurance somehow determine what steps are reasonable - that doesn't feel right to me.  If insurers are determined to be the arbiters of reasonable steps then the details of any similar insurance policy would do, not the specific one in this case.

I suppose that the solicitor could claim that they didn't know that they had to protect the pipes from freezing and therefore the case should rest on the information provided to them by their insurers but personally I think that stretches credulity.

BooJewels

50_Hertz said:

[Snip]
I know she's very worried. I have a contact in the village where the house is located. He has photographs / CCTV of her there helping to clear debris and throwing sodden plasterboard sheets into a skip. Not the behaviour of a solicitor who's comfortable with their actions. I'm trying my best to stress her and I think it's working. I'll move on an attempt to obtain the insurance when the time is right. At the moment she's taking the rope and hanging herself quite nicely.

That has to be one of the most bizarre things I've heard of any solicitor doing in the execution of an estate.  I've sold 2 Estate properties recently and getting them to even lift a finger was a constant battle - we thought they must live in an alternate version of the space time continuum.  They had a whole different understanding of words like expediency and urgency.

I hope she's not billing the estate for her time spent lobbing wet plasterboard at solicitors hourly rates.

Grumpy_chap

50_Hertz said:

The estate consists of the house and other assets such as investments and personal items. The Will states that the house is to be sold, all other assets liquidated and added to the proceeds of the house sale and then distributed. 

I am the only beneficiary.

I have approached 3 firms of lawyers. The first stage is to obtain the insurance information so that an assessment of any potential negligence by the solicitor can be made. The cost of this is circa £9000. If negligence is identified, and litigation against the solicitor is initiated, the eventual cost could easily exceed the loss to the estate and there is no guarantee of recovering those costs, even if successful. My judgement at this stage is that this route isn't viable.

I am currently pursuing an alternative method of extracting the insurance information. If that works, I'm confident that I will have evidence of negligence and maybe the wilful fostering of a misconception. I'm sure she has lied to me in a letter regarding the insurers reasons for rejecting the claim. It just doesn't add up and it's likely this is the reason she is fighting so hard to stop me seeing the insurance policy and Ts&Cs. I guess it could potentially be career ending if it all comes out.

I know she's very worried. I have a contact in the village where the house is located. He has photographs / CCTV of her there helping to clear debris and throwing sodden plasterboard sheets into a skip. Not the behaviour of a solicitor who's comfortable with their actions. I'm trying my best to stress her and I think it's working. I'll move on an attempt to obtain the insurance when the time is right. At the moment she's taking the rope and hanging herself quite nicely.

If you inherit the full value of the Estate, then the £55k is a loss to the amount that you will inherit.

It may be prudent to keep your own counsel for now and let the Solicitor / Executor get on with the job of winding up and distributing the Estate.  Any conversation, indication of challenge etc now will only likely add delay and costs to the Solicitor's fees which will all be deducted from the Estate.

Once you have the proceeds distributed as per the Will in your account, you can then assess whether there are (demonstrable) grounds for a claim with plausible chances of success.

Out of interest, if this is a relatively simple Estate with sole beneficiary, why is there a Solicitor acting as Executor?  Was the Firm of Solicitors stipulated in the Will?  
Typically, with such a simple distribution, the sole beneficiary would also be the Executor.

BooJewels

@doodling - I fully get the insurance aspect and believe I've posted earlier in the thread about it - might even have pasted the wording from mine.  In the 2 estate properties I've cleared and sold (and my sister has an empty property she's currently selling with the same terms), it was a condition/endorsement of unoccupied property insurance that either the water was drained from systems or that the heating was left on with a specified minimum temperature on the thermostat. There were other details about leaving internal doors and loft hatches open to allow warm air to circulate. They both also required the property to be checked weekly and a log kept of such visits.

So either the solicitor didn't advise the incumbent insurers that the property was unoccupied, or they didn't meet the terms for such a property.  Accidents can always happen - but the measures I outlined above would either mitigate the likelihood or ensure it was discovered before as much damage had occurred. 

As an executor has a duty to protect the estate's assets, then insuring the property and meeting the terms of such a policy is their responsibility.  Presumably that's why the insurers have refused to pay the claim, as the terms of the policy weren't met.