Executor refusing to distribute estate

topbanana1985

SadCodeMan said:

Marcon said:

You are not responsible for what happens to other people. It's an excuse/reason I've heard many a time - and it's no more valid in this case than it is in any other. 

I am not arguing with your sentiment in this case but, I do think I don't agree with it in a general sense. if everyone (who can) tries to improve the world we live in then everyone (including yourself) enjoys a better world.

The bit doing the heavy lifting though is 'who can'. If you were in a position to be able to keeep on with this course of action without causing you mental or (unacceptable) financial impact, (and you wanted to) then I would say it was entirely right for you to do this and would be 100% behind you.

However, I think it sounds like that isn't the case. I think @Marcon's last line sums things up very well.
Don't let the rogue solicitor beat you a second time. Leave that to someone else and try to put it behind you while pating yourself on the back that you have tried to do everything you could have done in this case.

Agreed, if everyone just sat back and took it/let anyone who is a bully or rogue get away with it, then the world is definitely going to be pretty crap.
Could you imagine what the world would be like if people like Martin Luther King, Emmeline Pankhurst and other such figures didn't stand up and "fight the fight" for the greater good.
Now, I'm most certainly not comparing myself or my actions to them, far from it, but I believe in standing up for yourself and others, when faced with the wrongs of the world.
And in my scenario, I am standing up for my younger siblings (one of which was only 12 when mum died) and if I can help anyone else along the way, them I'm darn well gonna do so. Hence why I'm continuing to try.
So thank you for your sentiment

topbanana1985

bobster2 said:

SadCodeMan said:

Marcon said:

You are not responsible for what happens to other people. It's an excuse/reason I've heard many a time - and it's no more valid in this case than it is in any other. 

I am not arguing with your sentiment in this case but, I do think I don't agree with it in a general sense. if everyone (who can) tries to improve the world we live in then everyone (including yourself) enjoys a better world.

The bit doing the heavy lifting though is 'who can'. If you were in a position to be able to keeep on with this course of action without causing you mental or (unacceptable) financial impact, (and you wanted to) then I would say it was entirely right for you to do this and would be 100% behind you.

However, I think it sounds like that isn't the case. I think @Marcon's last line sums things up very well.
Don't let the rogue solicitor beat you a second time. Leave that to someone else and try to put it behind you while pating yourself on the back that you have tried to do everything you could have done in this case.

It is not at all clear that the solictor is "rogue". Slow and perhaps made some errors and now retired - but OP took a year and spent £3,500 just to find out that the solicitor had been right all along about what documents they did and did not need to supply.

Most of the delay seems to be due to the OP's reluctance to sign a document to confirm they have received the estate accounts - based on some suspicions and some points of principle.

From a previous thread - it seems the solicitor dealt with the property involved in this estate fairly promptly - and it's now just a small amount of cash left to distribute.

Apologies in advance for this following rant.

I took it to court with the understanding that an "inventory and accounts" request was the route to take, after receiving advice from other solicitors, plus a quick Google search of what beneficiaries can do when faced with an executor that is not forthcoming with info, everyone/everywhere points towards doing an inventory and accounts application with the court, in order to obtain said information. 

As for the executor being rogue, as I said, I have heard a number of complaints about him/his firm, one of the solicitors at the firm got struck off after an sra investigation, (the poor lad probably got thrown under the bus). Plus it's not merely suspicions, there is definitely an amount of money that was on the interim accounts and has disappeared off the current accounts, along with all the other 50+  errors... (That I found, there may even be more that I have missed or don't know about) so not exactly the odd 1 or 2  mistakes. Not to mention the scale/type of the mistakes, we are not talking forgetting to dot an i, or misspelling an insignificant word, we are talking mistakes like 76-4=74, the £200 disappearing, and even a £7,942 changing to £7,492 on one document, then it's £72,942 on the next (which of these amounts is the correct one, who knows, because I certainly don't) Then when questioned about all these issues, the response I received was that he has done nothing wrong and there are no errors, everything has been approved by him and his accounts, therefore it's all correct.

Hence why I have been trying to get sight of supporting documentation, because quite frankly, what has been written in estate accounts could easily just be made up, and since he is fighting hard not to give us any supporting documentation, what else is he hiding? If he was confident in his actions/administration and he has done nothing wrong, then why not just provide supporting documentation, why continue to refuse to give/show it and why hold our inheritance to ransom?

If he provided it to us, or even offered to let us come and see it at his office and we saw that all was accurate and correct, I would happily hold up my hands, sign the waiver and be done with it, but let's face it, there's got to be some reason he's desperate not to give it to us.

So I'll let you make up your own minds as to whether he's rogue or not.

With regards to the delays, the majority have been in waiting for responses from them (it takes them up to 8 weeks to respond each time), the ombudsman (a few years for their investigations) and the courts (almost a year), along with a 6 year wait for a disputed debt to become statute barred and now one of the solicitors in the firm that was helping dealing with the administration of the estate, now suddenly doesn't work there anymore. I sent her an email in August, only to be told in October that she's no longer with the firm. I'm still waiting on an actual response to my email/questions, and yes, I have sent chasers. So us declining to sign is not the cause for the majority of the delays.

The first document they demanded we sign included an indemnity clause, which they removed after I questioned it. Now the latest document they are demanding we sign states "residual". In other words, final, end of, no more, so if we sign, we wouldn't be able to take this matter any further. Not to mention that it's not a legal requirement that we sign it, which they themselves have admitted and confirmed. Receiving our inheritance should not be contingent in us signing it. Even the law society said that the estate must be distributed regardless of obtaining our signatures or not. So they should have distributed the whole estate years ago. We have been advised by 3 other independent solicitors not to sign it. I'm also not comfortable signing anything that I do not agree with. They said it's merely signing to say that we have received the estate accounts and that we will receive an amount as the residual estate. I do not agree that we have received the estate accounts, what we have received is a couple pieces of paper that the firm/executor has typed out, containing numerous mistakes, which could be any made up BS. Along with their persistent refusal to provide any supporting documentation, therefore we have no proof that these are the true estate accounts and the amount that they are claiming is the residual estate, again, we have no way of knowing if this amount is true or not. Therefore, I believe that signing this would be pretty foolish.

Yes, they did deal with things fairly fast and smoothly to start with, but then the mistakes started to come to light after they sent us interim accounts, which is when I started to look deeper in to it all and discovered no end to their errors.

Savvy_Sue

Cross out and initial anything apart from "I acknowledge that I have received the accounts."?

bobster2

You have an impasse.

Where residual beneficiaries refuse to approve the estate accounts then the executor has a few options...

• They can distribute the estate anyway ("can" not "must") but this is risky for an executor.
• They can make a payment into court instead.
• Or apply to the court for directions

https://www.lawsociety.org.uk/contact-or-visit-us/helplines/practice-advice-service/q-and-as/a-beneficiary-refuses-to-approve-estate-accounts-what-can-i-do

topbanana1985

Savvy_Sue said:

Cross out and initial anything apart from "I acknowledge that I have received the accounts."?

Thank you, we did actually try a similar approach previously, we removed the word "residual"/crossed it out and also included "a document titled" before the "estate accounts" part.

They refused to accept it.

We have also considered signing it and writing "under duress" on it. Not sure if that would work or not.

topbanana1985

bobster2 said:

You have an impasse.

Where residual beneficiaries refuse to approve the estate accounts then the executor has a few options...

• They can distribute the estate anyway ("can" not "must") but this is risky for an executor.
• They can make a payment into court instead.
• Or apply to the court for directions

https://www.lawsociety.org.uk/contact-or-visit-us/helplines/practice-advice-service/q-and-as/a-beneficiary-refuses-to-approve-estate-accounts-what-can-i-do

Thanks. Funny you should mention that link, as we actually believe that it is the firm in question and they are asking about this exact situation (me, I'm the beneficiary that refuses to approve the estate accounts), as the dates it was published are very coincidentally the same as correspondence with the firm, and the firm have quoted parts of it and said that the law society endorses it. (They of course only quoted the parts that were good for themselves, and failed to mention the 3 options) if it's not them who have asked the law society that question, they have definitely seen that website, because they quoted from it.

Regardless of whether they are the firm who asked the law society that question, and regardless of them already seeing that site, I have told them the options on a few occasions, most recently in June this year, when I emailed them, pointed them back to that website page and told them to pick one of those 3 options.
They eventually responded in August with "no" (in short), to all 3 options. So I tried again and told them (in August) that they must pick one of those 3 options, as they are legally not allowed to withhold our inheritance indefinitely.
I'm still waiting on a response, other than "we are looking into it", "we will respond shortly" and "Ms .... No longer works here, your case has been passed to Ms  ....  and she will respond soon", that was the last correspondence I received from them, which was end of October. (I doubt a chaser will get me anywhere, but I will try this)

So basically, they are refusing to distribute the estate until we sign.
They are refusing to provide us any documentation to show that what they have written in the accounts is true/accurate.
They are refusing to pay the estate in to the court.
They are refusing to apply to the court for directions.

More reasons why I tried taking it to court myself, since they refuse to do anything. And now the probate court have responded and says that an inventory and accounts application is not the correct route as supporting  documentation is not a requirement of the state and it needs to go to the chancery court. (Yay, £3,500 down the drain for that court response) I am very worried that if I did go to the chancery court, they would find some excuse to dismiss it.