Missed information by CLS what can we do?

calamitykay1

Following the death of our mum, we engaged Co-op Legal Services to sort out the Probate as Mum had her funeral plan with them and in her eyes, they would make sure everything was done properly.
It should have been straightforward as dad had passed 4 years ago & everything became Mum's. There is only 1 son (my husband) and she had a valid Will leaving everything to her son.
CLS handled Probate. We sent them deeds to the house & an additional small piece of land that made up the garden.
The house was put on the market and we have buyers ready & waiting.
We engaged solicitors to handle the sale for us. On receiving a copy of the Grant of Probate we received a call from our solicitors to say there was a problem.
The piece of land bought in 1970's was bought in dad's name only.
Although it is registered with land registry apparently we should have applied for Probate when dad passed. We naturally assumed that everything just became Mum's. The only asset they had was their home. No savings, pensions etc.
We now have to apply for Probate for this piece of land to be transferred to husband.
I contacted CLS to ask why they hadn't picked up on this issue as they could have done the extra work as part of their fixed fee.
Needless to say, they haven't replied yet.
Would we be within our rights to lodge a complaint?
The solicitor we engaged for the sale picked up the discrepancy within an hour of receiving the deeds. She said companies like CLS have loads of 'underlings' who take care of the paperwork that is then overseen by actual solicitors.
Regardless, we now have to pay out twice for Probate and the inevitable delays this will cause. 
I just hope we don't lose the sale of the house. 🥺

Flugelhorn

I am not sure that when someone is applying for probate that they actually look at who owns what - they look at the estimated value of things and because they were told that the garden was a separate piece of land, they put that down as the value that you probably quoted to them

Probate application by a company is usually just listing / adding up the values of things that a relative has told them 

Keep_pedalling

If the Co-op had picked up on the mistaken assumption that this piece of land had inherited by survivorship by you NIL you would still have had to apply for probate for your FIL so there has been no financial loss here. In fact this could save you some expense as you can apply for probate yourselves rather than use a 3rd party. 

Because he died 4 years ago you will also need to do a simplified IHT return using IHT205 and this needs to be done prior to applying for probate.

Did he leave a will?

calamitykay1

FIL left no Will, mum survived him by 4 years but at least she DID have a Will. 
Our financial loss here comes as a result of having to pay our solicitors (the ones handling the sale of the property) for sorting out the Probate for the strip of land Dad bought as we had a fixed fee from CLS for Mum's Probate and now we have to pay the same for this piece of garden that been part of the property for over 50 years. 
Had we not included the bill of sale for the strip of land then no-one would have been the wiser - sometimes it pays to be more economical with the truth (advice given many years ago by a solicitor)

Keep_pedalling

You paid CLS to sort out one estate not two, had they actually noticed they would not have just done it for the same price. What is stopping you applying for letters of administration yourselves? It really is not that difficult and you will almost certainly get it done faster and cheaper. 

You would not have got away with keeping quiet, it would have been discovered by your conveyancing solicitor at some point during the process. 

sheramber

Who administered fil’s estate and transferred the house to  mil?
That is the person who should have picked up that the piece of land was in fil’s name only. 

Flugelhorn

sheramber said:

Who administered fil’s estate and transferred the house to  mil?
That is the person who should have picked up that the piece of land was in fil’s name only. 

not really necessary to transfer the property - I found out when mother died  that my father was still on the register 20 years after his death, - when I  sold the property, I mentioned this to the conveyancing  solicitor who said "no problem, just a few more keystrokes"