Do solicitors hold deposits?

keano007

Can anyone tell me can a solicitor act as an intermediary between a private person and a company to hold deposits?

Say, for example a person getting married. Could they set up an account with a solicitor to pay all deposits into their account.

In this unfortuate climate I'd be surprised if this wasnt common practice.

Procrastastudy

keano007 wrote: »

Can anyone tell me can a solicitor act as an intermediary between a private person and a company to hold deposits?

Say, for example a person getting married. Could they set up an account with a solicitor to pay all deposits into their account.

In this unfortuate climate I'd be surprised if this wasnt common practice.

This is call escrow - different concept to a deposit. A deposit is kept if you change your mind, why would the company accept this?

EDIT: Oh I see - you'd still loose the deposit if you changed you mind. Yes you want an escrow service. Make sure you pick a Solicitor which isnt going to go bust or South America

keano007

Procrastastudy wrote: »

This is call escrow - different concept to a deposit. A deposit is kept if you change your mind, why would the company accept this?

EDIT: Oh I see - you'd still loose the deposit if you changed you mind. Yes you want an escrow service. Make sure you pick a Solicitor which isnt going to go bust or South America

Ya well I course the idea of it is that the deposit one would pay would be safe if the company went bust.

So does anyone know do many solicitors offer the service of setting up escrow accounts and what would they charge?

CIARAN_BOYLE

keano007 wrote: »

Ya well I course the idea of it is that the deposit one would pay would be safe if the company went bust.

So does anyone know do many solicitors offer the service of setting up escrow accounts and what would they charge?

dunno I'm sure some do

There is a website nationalescrow.ie that quotes a price of €110 to set up a transaction but thats probably designed for signifcantly larger transactions
http://www.nationalescrow.ie/frequently-asked-questions.html

Peregrinus

Any solicitor will do this if you're willing to pay him enough, but "enough" is likely to be quite a lot.

The holder of an escrow doesn't ever want to be in position of deciding what he ought to do with the money. There will be an escrow agreement bewteen the solicitor, the person who pays in the money and the person who hopes ultimately to receive it, and this must deal comprehensively with every possible scenario, permutation, dispute, etc, so that it is always 100% clear to whom the escrow agent (the solicitor) must pay the money. The big cost is the negotiation of the escrow agreement and the person - or all the people - hoping eventually to receive some or all of the money all have to be involved in that negotiation, and they all have to sign the escrow agreement. This is a time-consuming exercise and the time - and cost - of doing it does not depend on the amount of money that is expected to be held in escrow.

And, of course, the whole thing is a non-starter unless the various providers and suppliers are willing to agree in the first place. Since many of them use deposits to support cash flow there is a cost to them in not receiving the deposit, so they may either decline to accept an escrow arrangement, or charge more if the deposit is held in escrow.

Del2005

keano007 wrote: »

Can anyone tell me can a solicitor act as an intermediary between a private person and a company to hold deposits?

Say, for example a person getting married. Could they set up an account with a solicitor to pay all deposits into their account.

In this unfortuate climate I'd be surprised if this wasnt common practice.

If you pay your deposits by credit card you can get them back if the company goes bust. With cash/cheque/laser you become an unsecured creditor, credit card companies can get the cash back easier.

Saying that I wouldn't be paying over big deposits to any place these days. I'd be asking them for a guarantee they'll still be around for the event and only pay over money close to the day.