My husband worked for decades for his mother no/very low pay. He was promised land by her, he contributed savings towards machinery and land that were subsequently bought by the business in which he was a partner. She died a couple of years ago and has thrown him to the lions in her will.
She’s split the land between 3 of them (hubby, his sister and his brother) his sister supports hubby’s claim for the land and agrees that he worked for very little pay in the belief that he would inherit the land but his brother and his partner are making life very difficult. We all live in close proximity, the police are involved as well as BIL (brother in law) having a criminal record for assaulting hubby.
Off on a tangent previously so back to the main issue here:- hubby had a conference with a barrister through a firm of solicitors back in may. A pre-action letter of claim was eventually written by said barrister and sent to BIL in September along with a letter asking him to stop with his threatening and disruptive behaviour. He was asked to acknowledge he had received the letter within 2 weeks with a formal reply to be received within 4 weeks.
We hadn’t heard from our legal exec for a while and made many attempts to get in contact with her. Upon getting in contact on Monday she eventually replied with an email saying that a conflict had arisen and the firm was no longer able to act for hubby on this matter. We asked if she could elaborate on what sort of conflict and we were sent an email which which was written as though it was meant for BIL. It mentioned ‘recent’ letters and meetings with a woman we’d never heard of but alas, on searching her name, works for the same firm and in the same office as our legal exec.
We requested a phone call and we were told that BIL had had a meeting with this woman recently (we assume after he received the letter) about a ‘probate issue.’ We think that this has been tactical on BIL’s part. He’s tried his luck, the firm haven’t cross checked or at least haven’t cross checked thoroughly enough (surnames and postcodes are the same and our address’ are very similar) and he’s managed to cause a lot of inconvenience to ourselves and caused a further delay in proceedings. He also didn’t reply to either the pre action letter or the letter about his behaviour.
Our legal exec said they only realised what had happened upon speaking to her colleague in the office and she had been seeking advice since to see if they could continue to act for us but, as it transpires, they can’t. We get to keep our barrister and all of the work done so far still and she will transfer all work through to our next chosen solicitor at no extra cost to ourselves. She said it won’t affect our case but we’re pretty peeved that he’s been allowed to do this. We have no other way out of this, he won’t sell his share to us nor will he buy hubby’s share. Hubby has invested all of his money into the business and cant get anything out. He feels trapped. But this just shows how underhand and untrustworthy BIL is. We have a portfolio of evidence on him. But surely the solicitors firm are at fault for not checking