Forum Topic

Probate costs comparisons advice

Just had a meeting with a new Solicitors to me as the one we had was closed by the SRA in an intervention, moving all the documents we had to SRA headquaters. Great, not.  Anyway, there is property and straight fwd bank accounts so he advised probate definitely needed.The solicitor costs were suggested for the whole process start to finish were 1 percent of accounts assets and 0.5 pc of house valuation  Also there is time involved and paperwork , so it was suggested 4.5k was going to be near a final sort of figure and a 4 to 5 month process as both SRA and probate gov dept are both struggling.Do these costs raise any eyebrows , I've not gone through this before.

Andrew Craig ● 2050d10 Comments

Doesn't really raise eyebrows. I paid 4k to get Probate done for my husband in 2015 but that was a fixed sum. I'm a bit wary of solicitors who charge percentages as the amount of work involved has nothing to do with the value of the estate.Is s/he going to do the work of getting accounts etc paid out after Probate? I did that myself as it's straightforward enough and they will charge extra for that.4-5 months just to obtain Probate seems like a long time but I assume the Probate Office is doing the 'Because Covid' thing which is used to explain all delay and bad service these days.

Susan Kelly ● 2050d

Have you thought doing it yourself. The official guidance notes are excellent and can be downloaded from the government web site for free. Also the relevant forms. If a problem arises you can also telephone the probate/inheritance tax office.If you use a solicitor he or she will rely on you providing the information to fill out the forms.

Chris Dakers ● 2050d

Thanks Susan.Yes the percentages were a surprise to me but I had nothing else to go on. In my head from years ago i thought 2k fixed might be the order of things.There will be nothing to settle account wise (work for solicitors) for them as I have tied it all up myself and as executor I will just need to distribute to grand children etc. Yes Probabe dept is well behind and they are doing the covid thing but he thinks 10ish weeks for that alone. We are stumped because we don't have the original will and deeds as the SRA have them in a warehouse and they are doing the covid thing too

Andrew Craig ● 2050d

He explained he has direct access to documents requests to the SRA internally and all I have is a extremely complicated SRA request form which I would need separate advice about anyway and it would go in the Joe public queue at SRA once received for that processing. Also he mentioned 2 or 3 things which could easily have tripped me up on my own so no , if I had done this once before I would be better placed to assess a self done process.

Andrew Craig ● 2050d

As a side issue everyone should be extremely wary of nominating their solicitor as an executor of their will. The cost of obtaining probate varies wildly and it is essential for executors to shop around - tricky when one of them has a vested interest! Some of the worst offenders in terms of overcharging are the High St banks and the combination of  charging a fee based on percentage of the estate AND billable hours is quite common.

Bruce Hammal ● 2050d

I did it myself in 2007 was quite easy but did not have a property to sell as I was able to do that beforehand as I had Power of Attorney.  If you have Stocks and Shares to sell there are sites that will value them at a lower rate than banks.

Chris Lucy ● 2050d

The other warning I would offer is to be careful when leaving money to charities.  If you leave a percentage and the sums are large, there are charities that cause big delays by requiring justification of every action such as the various valuations.  My mother left a modest percentage to 10 charities and the sums were £1,000 to £2,000 each.  One very well known charity did challenge and, fortunately they accepted the rational for the actions taken by my husband as executor.The better option is to gifts fixed amount which the donor can adjust in a letter of wishes at any time.

Elizabeth Ross ● 2050d

I also obtained probate a few years back. It is mostly just time-consuming but there are good self-help guides available and I found HMRC and the Probate Office to be extremely helpful. This was a case in which the family solicitor was nominated as an executor but fortunately he had since retired so he was persuaded to relinquish his position without too much fuss.

Bruce Hammal ● 2050d

As Bruce says, never appoint a bank as your executors unless you want your estate milked like a cow.

Susan Kelly ● 2050d

Just to reinforce this. My grandmother appointed her bank as a joint executor. The charges were extortionate for a very straightforward estate and to cap it all the bank sent the cheque to the wrong address.

Stewart Jones ● 2049d