I will try to condense this saga as much as possible, without leaving important content out.
My husband and I are executors for my late-mother's estate as well as trustees for her house left in trust. My father has already passed away – so with my mother’s passing, it is our duty to sort matters.
Neither myself or my husband have any formal legal knowledge or training – so we immediately engaged a very local probate practitioner with a multi-office set-up (quite a large organization).
We met, and she took all our information back to her office in early July. We are extremely organised and thorough and left no stone unturned in our search for documentation for her. We’ve been told it’s a more complicated case than most. We made a point of emphasising the house was in trust since 2013 (and supplied all relevant documents to her). She went away saying that she’d rarely had the benefit of such methodical preparation from clients.
All looked swell…
She also told us back in early July to hold back on marketing the house, as it was subject to probate – and this would not be through for around 20 weeks from application. This took us to an early March expectation for grant of probate. This made sense to us – being in the residential property industry.
The house was in great condition, needing nothing doing to it. It could have been marketed in July – but we sat on our hands (caring for an empty house) until October – when we thought it safe to list.
As the market was slower than 12 months earlier, and we’d missed the summer selling season too, we guessed that if we got an offer writing 2 months from October, then it would dovetail nicely with expected grant of probate arriving in March.
However, we had mixed feelings when we accepted a great offer for the house on 6/10/23 - just 4 days after listing. We were now worried that the buyer may lose interest as probate wasn’t expected until March. However we thought we would wing-it and worry about issues of being unable to complete owing to probate – when/if it happened.
We then told our probate practitioner we weren’t going to use her practice’s conveyancers. Why? Because as residential property was our business – we wanted to use the conveyancer in another practice – who we’d used for a good while - and was excellent.
I can hear you thinking, why didn’t you use the conveyancers’ probate department for your probate needs? That’s simple – we wanted a very local practice to handle our probate – owing to the future needs we’d have of having constant visits to the probate practice over the next many months. This local practice had great reviews, plus our usual conveyancing solicitor was 35 miles away.
Even so, as you’ll soon discover, I’m now wishing we had used the practice that our conveyancer is part of.
When we gave our probate practitioner the news that we weren’t using their conveying dept, it was clear to see it was not good news for our practitioner. Legal practices presume add-on business will be an offshoot of a probate instructions. She said she didn’t mind – but she clearly did. However, we instructed our usual conveyancer and relaxed knowing that we had a sale in the bag and that the professionals were handling things.
Fast forward 3 weeks to late October. I’d told my conveyancer, in early October, that he house was subject to probate – because that’s what we’d been told. The conveyancer called me out of the blue, once he had all the papers, to say that the house was most definitely not subject to probate – and it was 'there now to sell' asap. Mixed feelings again – on one hand – great news for a faster sale, on the other, what was our probate practitioner thinking of?
This mistake, it turns out, is a ‘Probate For Dummies’ Chapter 1, page 1 example.
The probate practitioner boldly dismissed this ‘no probate’ claim of ours as folly and told us in writing we were taking a big risk in selling without probate. This attitude dragged on till January this year. We’d become wise by then by Googling – and it was clear to us that she’s more than probably made a big mistake. I didn't want create waves in an already stressful period of a life-event.
Wrong, I know.
We decided 2 weeks ago however, after one too many horrible interactions with Little Miss Bossy-Boots, that we’d blow the whistle on things.
To summarise, the conveyancer was right. The probate practitioner was wrong – and we have had written confirmation of this major blunder by her director following us finally meeting her last week.
It was confirmed that, simply, the house was in trust and didn’t need probate under any circumstance. However my mum’s saving and investments were subjected to probate. We’d no problem with that last bit – we knew that already.
By the way, the actual practitioner - she’s a nasty piece of work. Possessing zero people-skills, no empathy, she’s arrogant and obstructive and a general horrible person to work with. We’ve constantly questioned her since the discovery in October – and she has always been hostile about her being right – and insisted that we were taking a chance selling without probate. She strengthened our resolve to drop her in it. She also clearly turned her team against us too. She’s a very influential character in her little festering domain.
Apart from our stress in worrying from October till now that we may be taking a risk – and therefore upsetting HMRC, it turns out that we kept a perfectly saleable house on ice for 3 months, whilst we sat on our hands waiting – with all the associated extra expense that goes with that delay. We also missed the summer sales market – we had to watch it drift by. As the market has been sliding downwards for 15 months now – we’d possibly have sold for even more in summer.Our Estate Agent was convinced it would have been listed at a higher price in July than October.
So in my eyes, neglect has been admitted in writing -and we have suffered as a consequence. I’ll be honest, I’m more motivated to see little Miss Bossy Boots get her come-uppance. I’m guessing a recorded negligence case doesn’t do wonders for your career.
It might even make her a better employee, and person too. If it had been a slip up that was admitted to immediately that would be different. But she perpetuated it for 4 month in the hope of riding-it out and hoping her bosses wouldn’t discover her major blunder. She seemed to get-off on me admitting I was worried about the so-called risk we ran.
She was immediately taken off our case when the blunder came to light.
The director has now taken over all matters up to completion of the practice’s task. The director, by the way, is all over us like a rash since the blunder came to light. We have her personal number to call her, or we can ‘drop in at any time for a chat’. We’re convinced it’s a charm offensive with a particular goal in mind. My husband say’s ‘she’s buttering us up’. However, It has to be said the director’s being wonderful and we feel so relieved now.
My question. Do we have a negligence case here, and specifically on what grounds? My husband thinks its cut and dried, as do I – but I wanted to tap into the experience there may be on here please.
Thanks for reading my mammoth post, and any constructive advice, thoughts or comments are appreciated.