Executor of a Will but with ‘Power Reserved’

Typical solicitor's behaviour. I doubt your 'Power Reserved' made any difference.

Complain about them to the Law Society. They are the organisation that registers solicitors for practice and can sanction them if they are inefficient

I had not known of Power Reserved so I had a look on the web and I found this article.

www.co-oplegalservices.co.uk/media-centre/articles-jan-march-2019/what-does-power-reserved-mean-in-probate/

I provide the link in case it might be of help to you, though of course you may already know all the information in it.

Better to know twice than not at all though.

MOnica I take exception to your comment ‘typical solicitor’s behaviour’. I was a solicitor and always acted with integrity. OP may find that using the firm’s complaints procedure assists but apart from the absence of an invoice she doesn’t specify her problem with the solicitor. If the administration of the estate has been completed as she says there is nothing left for an executor to do.

Germanshepherdsmum

MOnica I take exception to your comment ‘typical solicitor’s behaviour’. I was a solicitor and always acted with integrity. OP may find that using the firm’s complaints procedure assists but apart from the absence of an invoice she doesn’t specify her problem with the solicitor. If the administration of the estate has been completed as she says there is nothing left for an executor to do.

I think that an executor is required to keep a record of what has been done and be ready to produce it if required.

I do not know who can require its production though.

I do not know for how long the record must be capable of being produced by the executor.

Typical solicitors behavior, this is what I am finding with my mums estate, there were quite a lot of separate investments, we had collected all the paperwork, after a year they have not even wound those accounts up.
I was ripped off on my divorce too

I would take it up with the senior partner, it’s just unprofessional from any organisation to not respond.

GSM I am sure you are the exception to the rule, but I can only remember one occasion having a solicitor carrying out a conveyance for me or wind up an estate, where work was done without constant chasing. Over the years I have dealt with about up to 10 conveyances and 5 wills. The one efficient solicitor was a woman.

A good friend is a PA for a solicitor, she refers to herself as his “work wife”, he is totally disorganized, hopeless.

Germanshepherdsmum
I’m sure you know solicitors of whom we speak ?
I sold my last property 7 years ago. 6 months after moving here I received a court summons for non payment of council tax.
My buyers solicitors hadn’t registered the new owners of my property with the Land Registry Office ?

I have come across plenty of useless solicitors but we’re not all the same and I’m always sad to read ‘they’re all the same’ type comments. A great many people who do conveyancing and other legal work aren’t qualified solicitors, though people still refer to them as ‘my solicitor’, and a great many take on more work than they can cope with at low fees so consequently the service is appalling and mistakes are made. Corners are cut because the margins are so small. I know there will be protests about fees not being low but they have been consistently driven down over the years (I’m talking about since the 70s) by the ‘pile em high’ firms and levels of service have followed the same downward trend. People in general pay a lower hourly rate for conveyancing than they would pay a plumber. I worked mainly in commercial property with high end firms where this didn’t happen and work was accepted only for a proper fee which would allow clients to be given first class professional service. My work came solely from repeat instructions and recommendations, even at an hourly rate of a good few hundred pounds. More time to spend on the client’s work meant less time spent overall so cost effective for them and for my firms. As with everything you get what you pay for but so many people won’t pay a proper rate for the job and end up complaining and tarring the entire profession with the same brush. Incidentally lawyers in the big firms such as mine also do a lot of pro bono work, for instance for victims of domestic abuse, free work for people with no money, but that’s never spoken of. Not something the ‘pile em high’ firms tend to do.

Our family solicitor retired 2 yrs ago, the firm was taken over by a new group, previously work did get done properly in reasonable time. Now they are completely useless, we are seriously considering dropping them completely but there are problems doing that.
Has anyone got experience of changing family solicitor when there is property involved.

That should not be a problem. You will have to pay the existing firm for unbilled work done to date, then they are duty bound to transfer all your files and deeds to the new firm. May I ask what the problems are in changing firms? Feel free to PM me if you don't want to share here.

Germanshepherdsmum
Couldn’t agree more with the they are all the same/ we are all the same/ we have all etc
When I constantly see/hear those sentiments, in my head I say no we’re bloody not

Thanks Meryl?.

Tell them you're going to report them to the Law Society and see how quickly they get their act together Courtinsession

Some times when a random group of people have a lot of experience with another group of people with a shared chararcteristic and it is mainly negative, it is sometimes necessary for the second group to face some uncomfortable truths.

It is perhaps pertinent that those areas where most problems arise, are the two most of us experience: house purchase and adminstering wills, and are the two areas where most of the work is farmed out onto clerks, or in cases some solicitors effectively run conveyancing factories. Large offices with lots of clerks and a few supervising solicitors doing nothing but conveyancing.