Who pays conveyancing fees, Estate or Beneficiary?

[NotMeekNotObedient]

My mum passed away a few years ago, beneficiaries in the will were me and my sister.

One property to sell. Sister decided to gift her half of the property to her daughter via a Deed of Variation (this cost was paid by sister).

My half of the property was sold by the estate to my niece.

The solicitor has just emailed to say that there has been an error and that I was incorrectly charged the conveyancing fees, these should have been paid by the estate. This is completely different to what we were previously told. I never had ownership of the property at any point.

Solicitor is now saying that because monies have largely been distributed, my sister must return enough funds to cover the conveyancing fees. She is obviously unhappy with this.

My sister thinks that I should bare the full costs of these fees as she has no benefit from this.

Who is right, legally? ethically?

Im so confused at this point and would welcome your thoughts and advice!

How much were the fees?

How much is left to distribute?

Rightly or wrongly is there not a point where it becomes too late and it’s a case of bad luck? And should the solicitor have got this right at the time? Considering the amount they charge for this, generally unnecessary service, you would think they would get it right. I may well be quite wrong though.

Can you split the cost?

Solicitor should have done due diligence and you could claim it back off the solicitor as this is what you paid them for. It is their error, they are trying to back cover by seeing if your family will rectify it.

"Solicitor is now saying that because monies have largely been distributed, my sister must return enough funds to cover the conveyancing fees. She is obviously unhappy with this."

Basically, your solicitor f**ked up.

The solicitor should have accounted for the costs of sale correctly before any money was distributed.

"... I was incorrectly charged the conveyancing fees,"

Yeah, that's totally wrong.

"...these should have been paid by the estate."

The solicitor should have taken account of the fees before distributing any money. It was totally wrong to apply all of the conveyancing fees to the share of the estate that was left to you.

"My sister thinks that I should bare the full costs of these fees as she has no benefit from this."

It is not your sister that will have to pay half of the costs but her daughter, your niece. The reason for this is that

"Sister decided to gift her half of the property to her daughter via a Deed of Variation"

A deed of variation changes the will so that the beneficiary becomes your niece rather than your sister.

"Who is right, legally? ethically?"

However, having said all of the above, the solicitor was the executor and they have a personal responsibility to get things right.

If anything, it seems as though you may have a claim against the solicitor to recover half of the fees from them personally because they made a mistake.

As another poster has said it looks like they may be trying to pass blame for their own mistake.

I would suggest that you go back to the solicitor and ask for the return of 50% of the conveyancing fees.

If the estate sold the property then the estate is responsible for the costs and these should have been deducted from the sale proceeds at the time of the sale.

Is the solicitor saying your sister needs to return monies to the estate, in order for the estate to reimburse you? I would think that's only correct if your sister has had extra monies distributed to her that she shouldn't have had, otherwise if you have both had equal distributions then both of you would need to return 50% of the monies to cover it, then paid out to you.

Think you need to see the estate accounts to really know what's happened and what would be fair