Solicitors not releasing moneys

[AC1986]

My mother unfortunately passed away in November last year.
we have dealt with selling her house and this completed at the end of March. On the 17th of March my solicitors informed me that we required an executors account to transfer the fund into apparently due to there being no will and us only having letters of Administration not a grant of probate. They knew this from the 3rd of March but waited 14 days to tell me.

Its been nearly 3 weeks since the application for the account was sent and bank says it could be another 2 weeks till it is active however that it isn’t a legal requirement to have an executors account.

I’ve spoke to the solicitors to see if there is anything they can do to help us and they basically spoke to me like I was a child and that is was due to their insurance.

Can they do this legally? When my father in law passed away we didn’t require an executors account despite there also being no will.
I’ve got creditors contacting me wanting their money and this is making an already hard time even harder.

[atticus]

The explanation for requiring an executors account seems weak, and this could have been said somewhat earlier. You could raise this as a complaint with the solicitors, using their complaints procedure. You should have been told the name of an individual to whom you may address complaints.

Are the creditors you refer to your mother's creditors? If so, is there any reason the solicitors cannot pay them directly from funds held in their client account?

Are you clear under intestacy law of who all the beneficiaries are?

[Sam101]

Unfortunately with the staffing problems following Covid 19, far more delays are being seen in many organisations and what used to take a few days to deal with, now can take a few weeks.

Some banks are more awkward than others and have their own rules to go by, often due to the restrictions that may be imposed by their insurers. If they were to try and skip those rules, then if there were a claim at a later date, the bank would be at fault and their insurers would not support them. You can only try and impress upon them the urgency, but as Atticus has mentioned, you could refer the creditors to the solicitors, but it should be through before too long.