Estate value decreased during a period of inaction by the solicitor

[littleharf]

Good morning,

I was wondering if someone could offer some advice please.

I engaged a firm of solicitors to administer the estate of my late grandmother. All seemed to be going fine i.e. grant of probate had been applied for, all the signed account closure forms were already with the solicitor etc. We were just waiting for the grant of probate to be issued in order to close the bank accounts and cash in an investment portfolio. However, a few weeks after the grant was approved on 31st March 22, the solicitor dealing with our case started her maternity leave. She notified me before she left who would be taking on the case on her behalf. The replacement didn't get in touch with me until August and as she then had a period of sick leave, our case was pretty much left unhandled by the firm until September. In this time, the value of the investment portfolio which made up the bulk of the estate value decreased by circa £60k due to unfavorable market conditions. I appreciate the solicitor is not liable for market movements however, the investment should have been cashed in during April after the grant of probate was issued but due to the staffing issues at the solicitors we are now out of pocket by quite a significant amount.

For information, in September the replacement solicitor resent a new closure form for the investment portfolio to me claiming that the original closure form was the incorrect form provided by the financial institution in question. I checked my records and it was exactly the same as the first. This suggests they either lost the original claim form (which they definitely received as it was posted with other documents) or they're trying to cover their backs as they've realized they've messed up.

Is there anything that can be done to try and claim back these losses from the solicitor?

[EnglandPi]

As you say your solicitor is not liable for market movements, therefore I doubt any loss could be attributed to your solicitor.
Probate matters do take time unfortunately so unless you can prove your solicitor was negligent I doubt you would have a case.

[Sam101]

You could make a formal complaint against the solicitors practice. Try and speak with the senior partner about the possibility of making a complaint. Any practice would try and avoid complaints where their practice would to be investigated, so see if the senior partner has anything t say for the way you have been treated first of all.

[dslippy]

If the estate value had increased, would you be offering to pay something back to the solicitor?

[atticus]

Did you chase the solicitors in the interim period?

[littleharf]

Did you chase the solicitors in the interim period?

No, for the following reason.

I was informed by the original solicitor on their last working day before maternity leave (21st April) that they had not yet received the grant in the post. A little surprising as other estates I'm dealing with at the moment have had the physical document received in the post only a matter of days after being granted. 22 days had passed at this point but hey ho. I was also informed that a different solicitor would continue where she had left off from the 30th May. Therefore there was no need to chase up to this date (plus a few weeks extra to account for the "from the"wording) as I still considered this delay to be a reasonable length of time.

After this and up to August when I heard from the replacement for the first time, I did not chase as right from the start of the case there was always a potential challenge to the will. Therefore it was always agreed and communicated multiple times that the solicitors would retrieve all financial assets as soon as the grant was received, settle all liabilities from those assets and then leave the residue of the estate in their client account until after 6 months from the grant of probate. As opposed to making any immediate distributions to the beneficiaries. This was to ensure no issues if that challenge materialized. Therefore I was not expecting any update during this period and based on the 21st April update above, there was no reason for me to think nothing was going on behind the scenes and the silence from the solicitor did not seem odd. With hindsight, I should have chased.

To be honest I wasn't initially that concerned about the drop in the value of the estate but it was the receipt of the exact same account closure form in September that has concerned me. They had the same claim form since February. All it needed was to be dated and the supporting documents to be posted once the grant was received. It should have taken someone just a couple of minutes. Instead, it's taken approximately 4 - 6 months to post the closure form and 7 months to try and claim that the original closure form was not the right form. Nonsense of course as I took copies of both and they're exactly the same. I can only think of two possible reasons for this, as outlined in my original post.

[littleharf]

If the estate value had increased, would you be offering to pay something back to the solicitor?

Of course not.

However, I'm only interested in actual events as with any complaint regarding negligence.

[littleharf]

You could make a formal complaint against the solicitors practice. Try and speak with the senior partner about the possibility of making a complaint. Any practice would try and avoid complaints where their practice would to be investigated, so see if the senior partner has anything t say for the way you have been treated first of all.

Good idea. Thanks for the advice.

[littleharf]

As you say your solicitor is not liable for market movements, therefore I doubt any loss could be attributed to your solicitor.
Probate matters do take time unfortunately so unless you can prove your solicitor was negligent I doubt you would have a case.

I know the process takes quite a while. I'm unfortunately dealing with 3 estates at the moment and one is getting close to the 2 year mark.

To be honest I wasn't initially that concerned about the drop in the value of the estate but it was the receipt of the exact same account closure form in September that has concerned me. They had the same claim form since February. All it needed was to be dated and the supporting documents to be posted once the grant was received. It should have taken someone just a couple of minutes. Instead, it's taken approximately 4 - 6 months to post the closure form and 7 months to try and claim that the original closure form was not the right form. Nonsense of course as I took copies of both and they're exactly the same. I can only think of two possible reasons for this, as outlined in my original post.