Probate solicitors no longer trading

russandtam

This is an interesting one….
My wife runs a small care company. She looked after an elderly man for a number of years who had no living relatives. He has since died and had a prepaid funeral. She has seen his Will, and he left his estate to a number of animal charities. His solicitors were contacted and advised of his death, however, although they held his Will they did not want to deal with probate, so this was passed to another solicitors.
My wife contacted the new solicitors and passed on to them his final care invoice. This was 8 months ago.
She has since been unable to contact them and after checking with Companies House, it appears they are no longer trading and cannot be contacted.
The late customers house is still empty and has not been sold, her invoice has not been paid either.
What should she do as it appears she is the only person who has an interest. I believe all his regular payments such as energy bills and council tax are paid by direct debit, and I assume his bank are unaware of his death.

Keep_pedalling

She is not the only interested party the charities will be very interested as well. 

The SRA regulate solicitors and should be contacted to find out who now should be dealing with the estate.

https://www.sra.org.uk/consumers/problems/

Fermion

The SRA may not be able to help as you are a creditor and not the Executor. What did the Will say about who the Executor will be? Was it the original Solicitor who held the Will? 

If it was the original Solicitor who was nominated as the Executor they can't simply pass the Will to another Solicitor, they have to apply to the Courts (HMCTS) to change the Executor.

It's possible the Solicitor who the Will was passed to might no longer be trading because they were closed down by the SRA Intervention Board and all documents removed and placed in the Intervention archive in Coventry. (This happened in the case of my Mother-in-Law's Estate). That's where it starts to get complicated. The SRA Intervention Archive will only want to discuss particular documents held in storage with the legal owner or in this case with the Executor. There is also often no index to the documents removed in intervention cases - they have to be manually searched and it typically takes about 16-17 weeks to get a response as to whether a document is present. Let's hope this wasn't the case.

The key is who was named as the Executor.

https://www.sra.org.uk/consumers/problems/solicitor-closed-down/

russandtam

Thanks for your comments. I intend to visit one of the benefactors and discuss with them as they are just down the road from me. They are a large animal charity and I’m sure their legal department will be able to resolve this matter as it is in there interests.

Marcon

russandtam said:

Thanks for your comments. I intend to visit one of the benefactors and discuss with them as they are just down the road from me. They are a large animal charity and I’m sure their legal department will be able to resolve this matter as it is in there interests.

But who is named as executor(s) in the will? As Fermion says, this is a key point and will (or should) dictate what happens next.