If a solicitor dies and his business is closed, what happens to the documents he holds like house deeds?

[LemonApplePeach]

We'd paid off our mortgage decades ago and dh gave his solicitor the deeds to hold. They were very interesting with original building diagrams & additional documentation etc. About 15 years ago that solicitor died and his business closed. I didn't think to ask about the deeds because my dh handled everything, but I know we didn't get them back. We're now divorced and I own the house. I know I don't need deeds any more but I would like them anyway for the interest & they belong with my house. How can I go about finding them? Ex dh won't speak to me in an capacity.

No idea but I'd be doing a search on the Land Registry to check that you're still the registered owner.

The law society should have details of who took over their files, just send them an email and they should be able to help.

Most properties have been digitalised ages ago and will be viewable online for a small fee.

I think the OP knows that and wants to recover the original copies even if they are not required.

I know exactly what you mean.
I still have the original deeds for my old house (they were never asked for when I sold) and when I found the original deeds for my late parents much older house (which were) they were fascinating to read through, showing the plots of land that they had bought over the years to extend their garden.

This

The SRA will officially close down a practice if it's a sole solicitor that has died. The files will have been transferred to another practice.

If you can't find the information from this search page, then there is a "contact us" link on the same page.

Solicitors must have a "practice continuity" agreement where another practice takes over if the solicitor dies or is incapacitated by illness. So, there'll be a firm who will have taken over his practice. The solicitors regulatory authority will have a record of who took it over.

Whether that new firm will still have the files/paperwork is a different matter, especially as so much time has passed. They'll probably only have kept things that actually are needed to have been kept, such as original wills, share certificates, etc., i.e. valuable paperwork.

The paper files themselves and title deeds etc may well have been long shredded/incinerated. As said above, title deeds are now mostly computerised/digitised and managed on a central database of title deeds, so the paper versions are no longer required.

Having said all that, I once rented an office in a building that used to be a solicitor's office many years previously. It's cellar was fully kitted out with shelving and there were hundreds of solicitor's paper files going back decades that had obviously not been taken away when the solicitors moved out. They must have been their archives and either forgotten about or deliberately left behind. Nowadays that would be one hell of a breach of the data protection laws! I also looked at renting an office previously used as an estate agents, and their cellar was the same - again hundreds of files just left behind when they moved out!