Am I being ripped off

mcko

Hi all,
My mother died in June 2011 left a will dividing her estate between my 2 kids and me, one third each kids share to be left in trust till they are 21, all she left was her house.
Got bill this evening from the solicitor for 5000 euro for sorting out the probate and dealing with the kids tax.
It seems excessive.

Options please

Grolschevik

Similar figure to my experience, to be honest.

Littlehorny

Does that mean any tax owed by the kids inheritance has been payed? This is a good idea because they wont be libel when they reach 21, by which time they might be libel to pay more.

mcko

Littlehorny wrote: »

Does that mean any tax owed by the kids inheritance has been payed? This is a good idea because they wont be libel when they reach 21, by which time they might be libel to pay more.

No it does not include their tax

Milk & Honey

Did you get a price before you started?

mcko

Milk & Honey wrote: »

Did you get a price before you started?

No her will stated that this company deal with every thing I was expecting 2000 to 2500 to be honest
I must ring them in the morning

coylemj

mcko wrote: »

No her will stated that this company deal with every thing I was expecting 2000 to 2500 to be honest
I must ring them in the morning

A lot of solicitors who draw up wills include that clause, it is not binding on the executor.

mcko

coylemj wrote: »

A lot of solicitors who draw up wills include that clause, it is not binding on the executor.

Thanks I didn't know that still to late now

nuac

imho completely wrong for a will to provide next generation deal with a particular solicitor. Testators sometime express that view. I usually told them to mention it to their proposed executor if they felt it was important.

I cam across a complicated joint venture agreement years ago where the details were set out in the memo and articles of association. Buried in all the boiler plate was a provision that the Newco would continue to employ a certain firm of eminent Dublin solicitor.

At this stage I was acting for the owners of part of t he enterprise. Great pleasure in telling them and the other owners that they could ignore that particular attempted restraint of trade.

Milk & Honey

You can have the bill taxed if you think it is too high.

mcko

The problem is I don't know if it is to high, never had to deal with anything like this before

McCrack

Nobody can say for sure here without knowing the work that was done. 5k for a probate certainly isn't outside the expected range for what you describe.

I certainly wouldn't say you are being ripped off, and if that 5k includes VAT I would think it fine.

JBG2011

Very hard to comment accurately on individual cases but realistically, 5k is not an excessive fee for probate.

There is potentially a MASSIVE amount of form filling which will be beyond the gift of 95% of lay people.

The key is whether you were given a written estimate prior to work being carried out. If you weren't, there is a possibility of the bill being reduced (even if its not excessive) but that will take a fair bit of legwork on your behalf.