Member Article

Lawyer warns against rogue conveyancers

A lawyer from Newbury has warned of the dangers of taking advice from inappropriate sources when administrating an estate or holding estate monies.

Claire Dennison, from Highclere, specialises in wills, trusts and probate disputes and has warned against rogue conveyancers following the case of a woman who was told she must personally repay nearly £87,000 which vanished when the firm of conveyancers to whom she had entrusted it went into insolvent liquidation.

Claire, a solicitor at Clarke Willmott LLP in Southampton, said: “The case shows very clearly what catastrophic consequences can result from using an inappropriate adviser if you are an administrator of an estate or hold estate monies.

“An extraordinary volume of fees were billed by these rogue conveyancers who were neither regulated nor, crucially, insured to provide probate advice and the individual concerned is now left out of pocket and without compensation.”

When Ms Lyon died she had no will and no close relatives but a claim was made on her estate by three parties. Probate was mistakenly granted to one of these parties, a niece, who refused to return it when a claim alleging she had no right to appropriate the estate’s assets was brought against her by the other parties.

The niece sought advice from a firm of licensed conveyancers, having been referred to them by a work colleague who was married to a barrister, said to have connections with the firm.

At the request of the licensed conveyancers she had given them £86,765 of estate monies for “safekeeping.”

By the time a court order eventually came to revoke the grant of probate and appoint an interim administrator, the bulk of the money - if not all of it - had been used to pay the firm’s legal bills rather than being safeguarded.

Claire Dennison says this case shows how vital it is for anyone administering or challenging an estate to take proper legal advice from appropriately-qualified people at reputable firms.

Claire Dennison said: “The niece had also not acted reasonably in defending the proceedings because she had agreed to the firm’s high charging rates and did not limit the work or charges of the firm.

“She should not have taken the risk that matters would all turn out right, but should have obtained directions from the court in relation to the payments which she had made.

“It was not proper to engage the firm to defend the niece at the estate’s expense. Unlike solicitors, these licensed conveyancers were not authorised to carry out the type of work the niece was paying them to do – that is contentious probate and litigation services.

“Even if the niece didn’t know the money was being taken by the firm to pay its legal fees, she was still in breach because she had failed to ensure that the money was safeguarded and transferred to the administrator.

“There was also no escape from liability by claiming she’d acted honestly and reasonably because there had been no need to hand over the estate money to the firm – it was already safe – the firm had no estate function to perform, and the litigation the firm was doing was for the niece herself rather than the estate.

“Administrators and executors really need to ensure that the people they instruct to advise them are suitably qualified and hold appropriate insurance to provide back up for any negligent advice.”

Although the court noted that the niece may have rights against those who advised her badly, it seems extremely unlikely she will recover anything from her poor advisers since the firm went into insolvent liquidation in early 2014.

The Council of Licensed Conveyancers has disclaimed any liability because the losses took place in the course of unauthorised work.

Clarke Willmott LLP is a national law firm with seven offices across the country, including Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, London, Manchester, Southampton and Taunton.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Clarke Willmott .