Solicitor Made Mistake

samuel99

Hi all

Was wondering if anyone can help, I recently sold a property all went fairly smoothly etc etc , exchanged contracts monies recieved no problem . Three months later I recieve a letter from my solicitor stating that they accidently paid me a sum of money that they should have paid the other side and that I should pay this asap or face legal action.

Should I pay this as its their mistake ?

Any views or advice would be most welcome , thanks in advance

prudryden

Yep - just pay back.

geoffky

There is only one answer to this and its if you have received the money you should pay it back and you will be very lucky the don't want interest as well. ps you could be charged criminally as a couple were recently who spent the lot wrongly paid into their bank account..

Tozer

Double check that it has definitely been paid to you wrongly first and that the mistake by the sol'r is not that they THINK they wrongly paid you!

moneysavinmonkey

sounds like a case of unjustified enrichment. [NB this is a Scots Law term not sure what the relevant provision is in English but the principle applies]

You need to give the monies back as you are not legally entitled to it.
However any costs incurred in doing this should be reimbursed
e.g. if you have to pay a CHAPS fee then they should cover this.

The solicitors will have to compensate the party who the money should have been sent to (ie lost interest/any other loses caused by their mistake) so that's not your problem either.

Sorry, you can't benefit from their mistake by keeping the dosh!
hope you didn't spend the money already!!!

Jorgan_2

I was overpaid by my solicitor when buying & selling a number of years ago. They didn't do their sums properly & I was surprised to receive £2,500 more than I was expecting. A few months later I received a letter from the solicitor explaining the error and asking for repayment. I offered to repay them at £100 a month, it was there mistake after all & the money wasn't readily available to repay in one lump sum. They accepted without any problems.

moneysavinmonkey

good point by tozer also, make sure they definitely made a mistake and that they are requesting the right amount back too!

samuel99

Thanks for all the replies, don't really do forums at all and pleasantly surprised by all the quick and helpful replies , not what I expected.

I'm just a bit annoyed by the way it took them over 3/4 months to realise and the fact that I paid them for their service, which they didn't provide as expected.

Looks like the sensible thing would be to pay back the money, The annoying thing is that is has come at a bad time to be paying an unexpected lump sum.

moneysavinmonkey

samuel99 wrote: »

I recently sold a property all went fairly smoothly etc etc , exchanged contracts monies recieved no problem .

Seems like you were happy with your solicitors services from your first post...

If it would cause you genuine financial hardship or inconvenience to pay all this money back in one go then you might have a case for making a staged repayment. See the post above by Jorgan.

jammie*dodger

We were on the other end of this last time. We had a panicked call from our solicitors saying that he hadn't got enough money to complete - this while sitting in the removals van all packed up. We rushed around to the bank and got a bankers draft for another 2 grand which we then delivered to him. The sale went through and we moved in. When we got the paperwork through he'd failed to knock the £2000 off that we had negotiated after receiving our survey. All his fault but no apology or anything. Needless to say we were a bit peed off and complained to his bosses.He was fairly old and took retirement a short time after. Not sure if it had anything to do with us but I suspect we may have been the straw that broke the Camels back.

We got the money back very quickly. thankfully we spotted it within days of moving.

Rob

getreal_3

Similar thing happened to us a few years ago, it was not a large amount of money £600 but we were informed some months later. When we informed our solicitor that part of his job was to oversee things and ensure figures were correct he agreed and it was left at that.. after all I paid him to deal with it all therefore his mistake..

Does the Law of Estoppel not come into this? Unlss it was a large sum of money you clearly knew was not yours and kept quiet about it....