Probate solicitors-ATBU?

[PJ04JCW]

Long story short; mum died in Jan, got grant of probate a few weeks ago. Solicitors have been generally slow and useless, and now want me to sign over the contents of mum's bank account (£12,000ish) into theirs and they will transfer me 'the change'.
I am highly suspicious of this so wondered if I could tweak the letter, get the money sent to the executor's account I have opened, and ask solicitors to send me their bill along with copies of will and probate?
I have already told solicitors I want to be the one who writes to the other couple of beneficiaries with cheques from my account and this has been agreed.
Any advice gratefully received!

It's fairly common practice to make sure they get paid.

Why is a solicitor involved? Are they the executors?

This is completely standard. Obviously it depends what you instructed them to do though. If you just instructed them to obtain the grant, then you just need to settle their fees and off you go but if you instructed them to administer the estate then they would usually collect all the money in, finalise everything and then prepare estate accounts. As for being "slow and useless", they may well be but probate matters do usually take ages - always longer than you think. The solicitor is often dependent on other parties replying to them. They also have so many clients and and so many of these clients will think they're the only client. Best thing to do is just ask the solicitor if you want to take over. But in answer to your question about whether it's suspicious - no, not at all suspicious. Completely normal and you would be getting detailed accounts at the end showing where every penny went. Good luck - sorry about lack of paragraphs, my new phone is rubbish!

Unless the estate is very complex it is so easy to administer it. It is really not necessary to use a solicitor (and they charge a lot) even if they are named as joint executors.

I would recommend you do it yourself and it will take a lot less time.

I would want to see the bill first. You would Never give an blank cheque to a company so I wouldn’t be handing over 12k without a bill.

I'm so sorry for your loss.

It's fairly standard for lawyers to do this but there isn't any harm in asking if they will do it in the way you suggest. They should agree to it if they are confident you will pay promptly - this is generally done by lawyers so they know they will be paid.

If you are concerned about the service they have provided (and assuming they didn't charge a fixed fee) you can ask to see a breakdown of their time recording. They will have recorded every bit of work done on your file. If you are concerned that they took too much time or duplicated work etc you can challenge these time entries.

You can ask them to stand down and do probate yourself but they do not have to agree and may well want o keep the case, it’s income to them after all. Ask for itemised bills regularly. Let them know you will be doing this.
A solicitor was executor after my dad died, even though I asked her to stand down, she refused.
Towards the end she was very slow to wrap up hermshares, which pushed legal fees up. I asked her to stop st that point and wrapped up the shares. myself, luckily she agreed. She then made a mistake dividing up the estate between beneficiaries, which I spotted.
I’d advise checking everything they do. There’s plenty of advice for the layman out there.

We did our own probabte for DM and DMIl both involved houses. Its relatively easy and no need of solicitor.

Although it's too late for you, any reasonably literate person with access to a photocopier/scanner can do this. I found the HMRC and Australian probate people very helpful. I did probate for both countries.

Any money you pay to the solicitor will go into their clients account. Any misuse would have the law society come down on them like a ton of bricks. I work in a bank dealing with deceased accounts and we usually either dealt with the solicitor directly and released funds to them on sight of the probate along with the written authority of the executors or to the executors if they had extracted probate themselves. Why can you not have the funds put into the executors account and the solicitor send you the bill.

There was a problem with mum’s will in that she only signed and witnessed the draft so needed solicitors to prove it was legal. Example of ‘slow and useless’ was Mum’s bank writing to them on 6/6 (I phoned bank to check progress) and them not doing anything about it until I phoned to nag yesterday.
I think I will phone the bank, see what is more usual for them. Thanks for your advice

Celticrose

It depends actually on each banks policy of limit of funds,. If over a certain amount legally have to do it that way ie proof of probate but usually under a certain amount they can and will release funds.