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#Post#: 47923--------------------------------------------------
This will raise a laugh... CONTENTIOUS PROBATE!
By: Hroogar Date: December 2, 2024, 3:29 pm
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I hope so because all I feel like doing is crying.
My late mother passed way in 2021. Unbeknown to me, can I
swear, my ******* brother with one other beneficiary dragged our
terminally ill mother to a firm of solicitors to change her will
a few weeks before she left this mortal coil. This other
beneficiary actually gave the instructions for her last will and
testament to the solicitors approx. a week before she was
dragged to sign it high on morphine and with no hearing aids in
(brother left her £1800 hearing aids out that day,
surprisingly...).
I'll cut an extremely long story short now as I haven't the
energy, or money, anymore.
I put in a probate caveat. The solicitors became away of this in
March 2022 but didn't contact me at all other than issuing a
warning off notice. There was a financial gain for them to be
had which I will come to later. So the will was set up so they
act as trustees/executors or more accurately the directors of
another company who bought them out act.
So when I email the solicitor, they email the directors and the
directors email them back and they either respond to me or not
as they see fit.
Went to mediation and I negotiated a 40% cut against my brother
who now has 60%. I was originally down for a lump sum of £50k
which I reckon my mother probably thought the solicitor said 50%
(as all previous wills). Put that aside as it's largely
academic now.
Distribution according to will was supposed to be 10 months
after probate so should have been Sept 2024. House sold (that's
all the estate consisted mainly as other stuff was sorted
previously) in July 2024.
They issued interim accounts in June 2024 which showed £32k of
invoices on a £270k estate. Looked into Kenig v Thomas Snell &
Passmore.
They are refusing to finalise the accounts. They are no longer
communicating. My brother's solicitor has told them not to make
any interim payment.
It is so ridiculous. I emailed them 2 days after receiving the
interim accounts and asked to see copy of client
retainer/engagement letters and estimate of fees for
administering the estate. Six emails later and they are still
refusing to answer the question. At one point, I received an
email from a locum solicitor asking "what I meant by a client
retainer and estimates given"? Really? So you can see how they
can generate a meal ticket. One email stretching into six and
still no answer.
They are a law unto themselves. I have no money to contest
further. Mentally, I am pretty broken by it so much so that...
(I'll leave that you to fill in your own ending).
THEY STILL HAVEN'T MADE AN INTERIM PAYMENT OR COMMUNICATED ANY
FURTHER.
I've been advised to write a complaint and take it to the Legal
Ombudsman but I've read that the LO is toothless and I genuinely
think they will just add the cost of that to the estate. My
dear mother would never have signed up to this s**t had she been
of sound mind and capable of hearing what was being said. She
wasn't even strong enough to work into the building from the car
and the solicitor even noted that she had to shout when reading
out the will.
The other beneficiary and my brother are both clients of these
solicitors and I have a chilling feeling that this woman
probably does this to a lot of families she befriends. I won't
go into the whole background but it is sinister to say the least
especially down to having previous copies of my mother's wills
sent to her own address and not my mother's.
Honestly, you couldn't make it up!
One moral of this story is make sure you are adequately insured
with "BEFORE THE EVENT INSURANCE" which covers family law and
contentious probate.
Anyway, that was the short version.
The question is how do I get them to pay up?
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