Is there a final report or form at the end of probate?

Dubwat

My mother died in Dec 2021 and my brother was appointed executor. The modest estate was to be divided 50/50. It looks like a 'Grant of Probate' was issued in March 2023 and a large sum of money was sent to my brother and I in November 2023 after the house sale in November '23. The solicitor was going to send the entire amount to my brother until he reminded her of the 50/50 inheritance! The problem is that we are not convinced the entire estate has been settled as there are some shares still not sold (~€5k from employee share scheme).

Communications between my brother and the solicitor have been extremely difficult and any queries (via phone or email) takes at least a week (with reminders) for a response from the solicitor. And every time my brother visited in person, he felt like they were seeing the file for the first time! I think the current solicitor is the third one in the firm to deal with my mother's estate! By way of example, there was a fee discount on the house sale because they never issued a section 150 letter.

The closest we've got to a final statement, apart from the Grant of Probate (March 23) which predates the house sale (Nov 23), is what looks like a screenshot from their internal accounting software.

So my question today is there a final, final letter, report or form that should be issued at the very end of the probate process that includes all matters?

Thanks in advance.

Peregrinus

It is usual to prepare closing estate accounts which show all the assets received, and all the costs/expenses incurred, and all the distributions made. The closing balance should, obviously, be nil.

But note that it's the executor's reponsibility to do this — i.e. your brother's. If he has instructed solicitors, most solicitors will routinely do this (and charge for it, of course) but as his relationship with the solicitors is clearly not the best he may want to clarify directly with them that he expects them to do this.

Your brother can, of course, switch solicitors, but that is likely to incur additional costs.

Dubwat

Thanks for the quick reply. I did know my brother as executor was the only point of contact and I kinda had no part in the process. But we are brothers and we do talk. I was hoping there was a Form X or Statement Y to finalize things and my brother could use that to change his language with the solicitor.

And I guess, to flip things on its head, while they've been paid the vast majority of their fee but it must be bad business for the solicitor to leave these small unrealized fees hanging around. It must add up over time and affect their cashflow and ability to pay bills etc.

Anyways, thanks again.

Peregrinus

There's no external legal requirement to prepare estate accounts, and they don't have to be filed with the probate office or anything. It's just a good practice — the executor does have a legal reponsibility to get in the assets, discharge debts and expenses and pay whatever is left to those entitled, and how is he going to know that he has done that if he doesn't keep accounts?

As for the various small bits of uncompleted business that are hanging around, it's pretty standard for any multi-facetted project that you get 90% of the business done in about 20% of the time, and then the remaining 10% of the business drags out for ages. There's always going to be some issues that turn out to be problematic — a certificate has been mislaid, a change of address was not recorded when it should have been, you find yourself dealing with some jobsworth — and, while you can't predict at the outset which aspects of the estate will take far longer to sort out than they should, you can be pretty confident that some will.

One way to minimise legal costs in the administration of an estate is for the executor to take on as much of the clerical work as possible — he writes to the banks and share registrars and whoever, and makes the follow-up calls, and gets from the forms that have to be filled out, and fills them out, and returns them, and deals with the queries. He only involves the solicitor on matters that require a solicitor (like selling land, or pursuing legal action) or on matters on which he can make no headway and he wants advice on what he should do next.

But that's very, very time-consuming and, for some people, very challenging. Some people are better than others at dealing with paperwork and bureaucracy. Very often when somebody retains a solicitor its because they don't want the grief; they want the solicitor to handle this stuff, and they don't mind paying for it. As far as they're concerned, it's money well spent. Which is fine, but it doesn't make the problematic aspects go away; there will still be tail of painful matters that take an unconscionably long time to sort out.

A solicitor's nightmare is the executor who wants the solicitor to do all the work but doesn't appreciate that that's what he wants, and doesn't want to pay for it. He's in denial about the fact that there is a lot of work involved.