My dad died in August 2024. My brother and I are executors and beneficiaries of his estate, which covers a house, gardens, some fields and savings. We appointed a solicitor straightaway because we were worried about IHT and doing things properly, not being experienced in this stuff. My brother lives in the property, but he / we are keen to sell up and move on with our lives now.
The solicitor has advised that they don't think IHT is a problem. However. We are now nine months on and we still don't have the IHT account and are therefore not even close to even applying for a grant of probate. This is largely down to bungles and slowness at the solicitor, for example, not valuing the fields (which they were aware of) at the same time as the house last year, and muddles with title deeds. The fields were finally valued two weeks ago, although we have not had the valuation because the solicitor couldn't find the deeds (of which they had taken a copy approximately one month ago!) to give to the surveyor. The solicitor themselves seems to be continually on leave or unavailable.
Is this normal? Where do we go from here? How long could this all take from this point? Are we being too easy on the solicitor? I don't know how hard to push or if that just makes things worse or won't actually have an effect because these things move at the pace they move.