Conveyencing received letter threat of court

[twig1234]

Hello,
I moved recently and on the day of completion our buyers money was received by 12 but then my solicitor took three hours to transfer money up the chain so we did not complete on our house till 4pm. Solicitor stated they had transferred but issue with bank and delay there.
All settled in and this week we received a letter ordering us to pay 3000 in 10 days or will be taken to court. Our sellers are claiming money for fees they had to pay as they couldn't get removals to stay past 5 so they had to stay in hotel. Their solicitor has written three times to my solicitor requesting they pay as they had taken so long etc.
My solicitor is not answering me and I am now scared that I will have to pay the money which I do not have.
Sorry if this doesn't make sense.
Can my solicitor whom was paid to do this service etc and transfer money ignore all letters?
Do I have to seek legal advice from another solicitor ?
Thanks

You completed by 4pm therefore within the time frame, I think the purchasers are chancing it as you couldn’t have anticipated they would incur costs also it doesn’t cost 3k for 1 night in a hotel? Get back onto your solicitor as yes they should tell you the legal position. A quick phone call to another solicitor explaining the basis of being threatened with court might put your mind at ease.

Your conveyancers need to address this.

Ask to speak with the partner responsible for complaints.

Tell your solicitor you will complain to their regulatory bodies if they don't respond to you. You'll hear from them soon.

Hi thanks for the replies. I have emailed the financial ombudsman and have found the complaints dept of the company. The company was recommended by our estate agent and is a very large company.
The costs include the removal company taking the sellers furniture into storage overnight etc as they refused to stay on. My buyer was fine as she completed at 12, it's just the chain above me that were delayed due to monies taking a long time to clear up the chain. I understand why they want to claim for the financial loss but as totally out of our hands I cannot understand how I can be taken to court. The solicitor stated in letter to me that as my solicitor has not replied to them three times they will now go after me (not in exact words) for the money as it's my name on the contract.

Well yes if there is a claim it will be against you
What does contract say about time of settlement
If there’s no time specified there is no claim
The sellers have an obligation to mitigate their losses ,they can’t just book into a posh hotel

Too late for you but for anyone else ,usually a bad idea to use a big company recommended by agents
They use unqualified staff to churn through work, and don’t normally deal with post completion issues ( certainly without charging you)

Em to person you dealt with copied to Client advice partner giving them 48 hours to advise you of the position failing which you will take independent legal advice

Delays with Bank transfers are very common

@user1487194234

Well yes if there is a claim it will be against you What does contract say about time of settlement If there’s no time specified there is no claim The sellers have an obligation to mitigate their losses ,they can’t just book into a posh hotel

Too late for you but for anyone else ,usually a bad idea to use a big company recommended by agents
They use unqualified staff to churn through work, and don’t normally deal with post completion issues ( certainly without charging you)

Em to person you dealt with copied to Client advice partner giving them 48 hours to advise you of the position failing which you will take independent legal advice

Delays with Bank transfers are very common

I cannot see in any contract paperwork from our solicitor about timings on completion day. I have tried our solicitors three times even with the director and no answer. My next step will be to contact the complaints dept. Both solicitors that were involved have now left the company. If I don't pay within the 10 days and I cannot get answers from my solicitor I am worried it will escalate. I haven't got 3000 just ready to hand over. Do I try another solicitor to see where I stand. Our conveyancing solicitors have just left it to us. They won't answer the solicitor from our sellers or to us know.

Sorry forgot to say thank you for the advice

If you get taken to court and lose the worst that can happen is that you agree a payment schedule for the costs. No one expects you to have three grand in your pocket.

They should have taken out insurance to cover that risk. I did. Moving house in England & Wales is a nightmare, and things regularly do go wrong and get delayed.

Have a look at the advice on this page

www.theadvisory.co.uk/conveyancing/complaints-and-problem-solving/

Your solicitors are definitely not helping their case by not responding to you.

If this did go to court the judge would take a dim view of them.

However I’m not sure what the letter of the law is here re liability. The solicitors banker may also have questions to answer if the payments were instructed correctly and in a timely way and the bank caused an undue delay.

So long as your monies were with the solicitor well ahead of time and there is nothing that you did (or didn’t do) which caused the delay I cannot see how you can fairly be deemed liable to pay their costs.

Your Solicitors are at fault not you! Sounds like they sat on the money. Complain to the Solicitors Ombudsman if your Solicitors are not answering. You need to prove that you have tried all options to sort it with the Solicitors first so keep all copies of correspondence.

Yes our monies etc we there day before completion from bottom of chain etc and our mortgage. The problem was that my buyers money transferred at 11:55. My solicitor didn't transfer money until 3:30 so the other solicitors are stating there was a delay of over 3 hours. At the time my solicitor said issue with bank etc but now looking at everything I do not trust anything they have said.
We also had to pay extra to our delivery company to unpack etc later at 4:30 but we put this down to one of those things. I had no idea of any suing etc until I received letter this week from sellers solicitor.
I think it's going to be a nightmare either way. We either have to pay to avoid further interest and court costs. Or I have to Sue my solicitor to get money from them. This will also cost money as I will need to pay another company to represent me.
We paid everything on time, no delays on our part but due to either issue with my solicitor or the bank or just bad luck will end up paying lots for something that was out of our control.
I would definitely strongly advise anyone to never use a company through estate agent. It was sequence online that covered everything. That is not the name of the firm of solicitors though. They were through sequence.

You are a long way from having to hand over £3k
As I said earlier email your solicitor and cop in client care partner (details should be in your client car letter) and say if they don’t get back to you within 48 hours you will take independent advice and charge them for it
If you don’t hear back you should go to another solicitor as it is important to back in reply to the letter
If it doesn’t say in the contract that payment will be made by a certain time then I can’t see any claim against you will succeed
Just because it cost the sellers money doesn’t mean they have a claim,they have to show you are in breach of contract
Banks normally only guarantee that payment will go through within the business day

Even if they did issue proceedings against you it will take many months to get in front of a judge. They are chancing their arm. Pursue the formal complaint procedure against the solicitors and when that concludes you can then refer to the legal ombudsman. Don’t panic!

Please ignore the post from user1487194234 and the earlier one from AvidReader12. They appear to be unaware of the standard conditions of sale that are used for the vast majority of house purchases.

The standard conditions say that the money must be paid by 2pm. That didn't happen so completion is viewed as having taken place on the following day. You are therefore liable for whichever is the higher of 1 day's interest on the outstanding amount at the rate stated in the contract, or the actual losses suffered by the seller.

The courts will not uphold an attempt to charge the original solicitors for legal advice if they don't respond within 48 hours. Indeed, as this would be a small claim, you will not be able to recover any legal fees you incur in pursuing them (although you will be able to recover any court fees). Your solicitor will know this is an empty threat, so it won't do you any good.

As MrsBertBibby says, you should contact the partner responsible for complaints. You cannot go to the SRA until you have exhausted the solicitor's complaints process. The courts would expect you to try and resolve this with the solicitors before taking legal action.

@VanCleefArpels

Even if they did issue proceedings against you it will take many months to get in front of a judge. They are chancing their arm. Pursue the formal complaint procedure against the solicitors and when that concludes you can then refer to the legal ombudsman. Don’t panic!

They are not chancing their arm. Yes, it will take a while if the OP disputes the claim, but I wouldn't advise that as she is clearly liable. All the OP would achieve by disputing the claim would be to increase the court costs she must pay and increase the interest added to the claim.

I have been on the other side (of a more extreme version) of this.

On our completion date, we received no monies from our buyers and so were unable to complete the sale of our old property and purchase of the new one on that day, which was a Friday. Everything was packed ready to be moved and had to go into storage for almost a week whilst it was sorted and then we eventually moved. It meant our removals costs doubled and we had literally only the clothes we were standing in. Luckily we were able to keep the additional costs down by staying with family and pretty much just bought some cleans pants from the supermarket to keep us all going.

In our case there was a clear breach of contract and our buyers were found to be liable for the costs we therefore incurred. The issue actually was not with them or their solicitor, but with their buyers solicitor. However, they ignored all attempts to sort it in a reasonable and timely manner, didn't seem to understand that as we'd paid £££ for the legal contract to be drawn up we were going to enforce it through the courts if necessary as we weren't prepared to just write off nearly £2k. It did go all the way to court and the costs due to the contractual breach got passed all the way to the bottom of the chain who I think along with the legal costs ended up liable for a significant sum. I did feel sorry for them as ultimately (and it was never proven but only their assertion) I think their solicitors were at fault. I hope they pursued their solicitor and were reimbursed. However, they really shouldn't have just ignored the situation and hoped it would go away. As PP said upthread, you're not expected to just have £kk lying around, but equally nor is anyone else and others in the chain shouldn't be out of pocket because your solicitor didn't do their job properly- and clearly, neither should you.

I would suggest:

-check your home insurance, bank account, anything else that might have 'legal cover' through. We had it through our home insurance and they basically picked it up, sorted it for us and sent us a cheque when it was done. Hopefully you've got legal cover somewhere so you can have decent legal representation at no cost

• Check the contract of sale- this should state the time by which funds should be moved, if no time is stated I'm not sure they have a case to say there is breach of contract anyway
• Follow the complaints procedure for the firm you used and write to the people pursuing you to confirm you are doing so and ask for a reasonable amount of time to do this (few weeks maybe), obviously ensure that deadline works with whatever deadline you expect the complaint to be sorted
• If no response from your solicitor firm, escalate to their regulatory body

Good luck, it sounds like you weren't at fault at all so you shouldn't be liable (you may technically be liable as your name is on the contract that was breached (if indeed it was breached) but ultimately you should be able to pass that liability to your solicitor if they haven't executed their duties timely and effectively).

Ah cross post with @prh47bridge above, I was going to suggest the standard time was 1pm, but had an inkling I was wrong so didn't add that to my post (been a while since we moved, thank God!).

I think technically you're liable OP but definitely go after your solicitors for it as they've cocked up here.

And also I said in my first post you should be able to pass the liability to your solicitor. It didn't actually work like that in our case- our buyer had to reimburse us, and they had to be reimbursed by their buyer for their costs+ours and on and on as a domino effect down the chain as you can only sue someone you have a contract with.

Thank you all for all your replies. I'm very grateful.
I'm prob outing myself here now but this sale process has been awful.
On the morning of our move early hours our house was broken into and my keys were stolen and then used to steal my car. So on the morning of the move we had police, SOCO, emergency locksmith and then removals all in our house. We made sure we were out of the house on time and left immaculate with keys all changed.
So to then face this 2 months on is truly gutting. We are still sorting the car issue and insurance.
I feel that to now have to deal with this is truly gutting. I totally understand that no one should be out of pocket.
We've been let down by our solicitors. The whole move has been tainted by the theft and now this. As you can tell I'm feeling very sorry for myself!
It isn't clear cut and I'm thankful for everyone's replies. Hopefully it will get sorted. X

Oh @twig1234 that is really rubbish,I feel so bad for you. Honestly the best thing we did was get our legal cover insurer to pick it up and sort it. I hope you can do that as you really shouldn't be out of pocket either. I hope you're enjoying your new house at least.

I would send a letter by recorded delivery to the complaint partner, not just an email. Don’t forget to keep a copy as well.

Your first step should be to formally complain to the conveyancing firm. They should have a complaints process on their website and hopefully this should get a response. If not you might want to take your own advice - see if your household insurance covers this. If the conveyancers don't respond satisfactorily you can also complain to the legal ombudsman who have powers to force the company to make things right / pay compensation. However this is likely to take longer than the timescale you have been given. Finally if you think they have behaved unethically then you can complain to the regulator, SRA for solicitors; CLC for licenced conveyancers