Not a lawyer, but the wills and estate lawyer handling my mother's probate has been furloughed.
I am not that pleased that after handling my mother's affairs, which essentially meant running a business, for almost a decade, her will specified that a partner in a local law firm should be Executor. Work was passed to someone more junior, who slowly got through it. (The impression was that she had loads too much to do, so was very slow to respond to things, though perhaps my expectations were based on working with ultra efficient city firms. Oddly their hourly rate was not much lower. ) Its been a pain. The Executor inevitably has appointed people in their own firm to give other advice, and the employment advice was so clearly wrong I had to get a second opinion and indemnify the executor and fund the settlement myself. (Hopefully I get it back when the estate is divided.) My accountant then found an error in the probate figures which would have added £250,000 to the IHT tax bill. Now a legal executive has taken over, who had no idea that there is on-going commercial activity within the estate.
Surely wills and probate, in a town with a very high proportion of elderly, is not an area which needs Government support?
There may be a slowdown now, but they will be coining it once things lift.
Not really a rant.. I am beyond the stage of caring. If I had been executor, papers could have been in within a month.
If anyone on the thread, @Mumblechum0 perhaps, knows of anyone who understands the ins and outs of IHT, more probably an FCA , could they PM me as I could do with some advice. The solicitors seem to take the view that they work for the estate, they file the papers, and they then dispose of the assets. and divide the cash. They have now agreed to consider me acquiring some of assets, motivated in part by me wanting to prevent them charging fees for years, but my accountant has said that I need to be very careful about how it is structured. (Like most good professionals he is also aware of the limits of his knowledge.)