Solicitors......

liz_uk

My father passed away back in October and the probate etc has been passed onto the solicitors to deal with.

On Thursday, my brother (executer with my mum), recieved calls from 2 life insurance policies saying they haven`t even recieved death certificates yet.

He phoned the solicitor and they gave him excuse after excuse.. this has been going on for months, No money has come in, the funeral hasn`t even been paid, the mortgage company and crdit card companies are after my mum because the solicitor is doing nothing.

The easy option would be just to change solicitors, but my mum won`t.

I`m really struggling here, Should I arrange a meeting with my mum and the solicitor to find out exactly what he has been doing (or not) for the past 6 months. My brother lives over 200 miles away which doesn`t help !

Mortgage outstanding 135k
Cradit cards £40k

The life insurances should cover all of it, however the intrest is being slapped on at an alarming rate and only one of the credit card companies has stopped it.

Some advice would be much appreciated !

andyrules

This is an awful situation, and I feel for both you and your mum. I suspect that your mum is feeling overwhelmed and very down, possibly depressed and is unable to make decisions.
I would definitely try to get your mum go with you to see the sol, or else your bro really needs to get home for a meeting if he is executor. I'm not exactly sure whether you can go alone or not, but there's nothing to stop you trying to get an appointment to sort this out.

It does seem that the solicitor has dragged his feet, if your mum won't change then you could approach the Law Society for advice. It may be that you can claim some losses from him. Meanwhile I would contact the other CC companies and ask for the interest to be frozen. Has the funeral company chased up their fee?

I've found a link that offers some guidance, and hopefully someone with law knowledge will be along soon.
http://www.wisewills.co.uk/executors.htm

Good luck

just thought, there's a fairly new sticky thread over on the Marriages and Relationships board where people share experiences and advice. There might be something useful there.

Blacksheep1979

Contact the law society as well, there's a fair chance they'll look into this sort of thing and it's not the kind of attention solicitors want.

utterbar

Strictly speaking these people now deal with complaints against solicitors but I think they'll expect the OP to have worked through the solicitors own complaints system first.

andyrules

utterbar wrote: »

Strictly speaking these people now deal with complaints against solicitors but I think they'll expect the OP to have worked through the solicitors own complaints system first.

I think they are part of the Law Society, the bit that deals with complaints, as you say.

I used them several years ago against a nightmare sol and found them extremely helpful. Perhaps you could ring for advice?

brightonman123

i would phone/write to them pointing out your concerns, and say you want to take over handling of the estate.

1st priority ofr any death would be arranging the funeral, getting insurance (if any) paid out, settling funeral bill, then any other bills.

credit cards, afaik, are not a secured debt, so the card co's would have to sue the estate- they would be last on the list to pay in my book- depending how much each card has o/s, some may even write the account off as seen bad PR to chase a dead person for money!

Fondue_2

First off, is it a joint mortgage and is your mum the beneficiary of the life assurance policies? If so, I'm pretty sure that you won't need probate to sort the mortgage out. Just get the death certificate to the insurers, they will pay and then you can discharge the mortgage. Ditto any joint creditors.

In terms of the solicitor, you need to stick a rocket under him.

Firstly, yes, arrange a meeting. There is nothing that focuses the mind quite so much as the prospect of a client sitting across from you, asking what's going on. Solicitors are only human, just like everyone else, but still, this is obviously dragging on a bit.

If you're not happy with the responses, ask for the name of the partner who deals with complaints. I would do this at the meeting for best fear factor.

If the complaints partner is rubbish, or it's a sole practitioner, then you need to contact the LCS (as per the link above). They are slooooow I believe, but compensate for this by heavily stinging solicitors in favour of clients, so you should get a fair whack of that interest back.

HTH

IvanOpinion

I would find this unacceptable. We are still going through probate and we are 14 months down the line (almost complete, just a couple of stragglers to deal with). There have been some problems but the one thing that is important is that all bills were paid on time by our solicitor and at no point did I get any grief from anybody (except TV licensing, but the reasons behind that were explained and it is nothing more than a mild inconvenience).

seriously you need to get down to the solicitor and ask them what is happening and why these insurance companies have contacted you. If there is any IHT involved then the tax office will be on the ball and you will incur interest. Has an order of probate been granted yet?

I could be wrong here but if the mortgage/credit cards are in sole names then I thought the balance would be frozen at the point of death and not incur interest (I know this happened with my mums .. although it was only a small balance). If they are joint names then they will continue as normal with the companies expecting them to be paid, incurring interest.

Ivan

HelzBelz

I definitely wouldn't be happy about it and would want a very detailed rundown of what the solicitor has been doing for the past 5/6 months especially as you'll be paying them in excess of £100/ hour for the privilege of them doing nothing

liz_uk

Well, have made an appointment to accompany my mum for Friday.

So lets see exactly whats happenning.

Hopefully this will put the rocket up his !!!! that he needed.

I`m getting more and more angry at the fact that the solicitors secretary pointed out to my brother last week that two people have died within a week so they were very busy.. my brother pointed out that if they can`t currently serve there existing clients then why the hell are they taking on new ones??!!

Any advice on what we should be asking ??

Camie

I think what I'm about to write about may make you even more annoyed! I came onto the forum today to see if anyone had written anything at all about probate, as I was so incensed at the behaviour of the solicitor and wanted to warn people, so to find your post as such a recent one was co-incidental. My father also died in October. I instructed his solicitor to undertake the probate - but didn't specifically ASK about the charge - I should have done! He was well enough known to me at this stage as I'd had Power of Attorney for several years and he was a member of Dad's church; I thought he could be trusted. When I got the Terms and Conditions contract to sign a month later, I couldn't believe my eyes - not only were they charging handsomely - as solicitors do - but they ALSO were entitled to TAKE 1% OF THE VALUE OF THE ESTATE ON COMPLETION!! I shouldn't think one in a thousand people know that. I rang the Citizens Advice Bureau; they were very helpful. Told me I could do it myself & gave me the number of the Probate Office; they were also VERY helpful throughout. I downloaded the forms off the Internet site and had the whole job done in about 10 hours of work at home. The process was completed early in February with my 'swearing' at the Probate Office of my choice.
At the time that I told the solicitor to stop everything, like you, I also found that even the banks had not been informed of Dad's death. They still sent me a bill for over £350 "for work done", although all they'd done was pull some standard forms off their computer and send them out. They said they were "in the process of informing the banks" (I did it in 5 mins on the phone), and had "written for the price of Barclays shares" on the date of Dad's death. Why write? I found it in 3 clicks from Google; probably because they can charge £14 for each letter they write!
In short, unless your father died intestate, or his affairs are unusually complicated, consider taking the job away from the solicitor altogether. If you do, insist that they charge you only for the work they can DEMONSTRATE that they did FOR YOU (i.e. not letters and forms they use all the time and only have to have a secretary fill in a few fields to personalise them). I compromised in the end and paid them £250 in consideration of advice they actually did give without charge while Dad was still alive. Doing the probate yourselves is actually a good way of really finding out the ins and outs of the financial situation and if you and your Mum maybe with other family members too can do it together it shouldn't be too difficult. The forms are straightforward and the Probate helpline really IS helpful. I wish you well. Camie