Solicitor failed to register deeds

somehope. In reply to yours, yes it is normal for the Lending Institution to discharge the mortgage. What is open to question is that the deeds are not registered as yet. The matter of the legal practice splitting up is not of your concern. You paid him to do a job and they didn't do it. According to your past posts you are living inb the property for some time. When you are sending the registered letter to him you might advise him of your dissatisfaction, your repeated attempts to contact him and also of your intentions to report the matter to the law society. Also mention that he has whatever period you choose to complete the matters and as far as you are concerned you have discharged all fees in relation to this matter. Then if he doesn't like your content or tone, collect the papers and give them to another solicitor to check the validity of his story.
 
I would recomend that every new buyer checks that the deeds get sent to the land registry. I was waiting for a dealing number or some sort of number that I needed from the land registry to buy simple ground rent from the council and only when I got onto the land registry did I learn that the application had been lodged, rejected and never been relodged - 2 years after I had bought the house. It took me numerous letters, phonecalls and threatening emails to get the solicitors to get moving! You just can't trust them really.
 
Some hope,

Based on what the solicitor has now told you and assuming he gets the deed registered in a few weeks(seems to me no reason why this should not happen) it will all be over in a few weeks and you can collect your deeds then. At that point feel free to complain to the law society or to whomsoever you want. However while you have had hassle and worry through poor communication from solicitor and an almost certain inadvertent(as opposed to deliberate) failure to register deeds quickly you have not been prejudiced in any way. So apart from getting the work completed now and hopefully an apology from the solicitor what else do you want.
IMHO allow the solicitor the three weeks to get all done. When its done if you want to pursue the matter further then fine but the most important thing is the work being done and the only thing you will gain right now by engaging another solicitor in the short term is expense for yourself.

BTW he does not need the vacate from FA to register the purchase deed this can be done first followed by the vacate. He is right that he must get the vacate but if he never registered the FA mortgage in first place then the vacate itself does not need to be registered.
 
Sarahj,
AFAIK solrs have access to that info via a website to check up on dealings,...Im open to correction.



Some hope,


So apart from getting the work completed now and hopefully an apology from the solicitor what else do you want.

I suppose (s)he wants to know that sloppy work like this is not tolerated I wouldnt trust a character like this as far as I would throw them.

Take him at his word fine but also have a letter prepared for the law society (send if you like and you can withdraw if he performs), that carry on by cowboys/professionals makes my blood boil.

J
 
What about a choice for the Solicitor, after he has finished. A 50% refund of the fees or a report to the Law Society. Please don't insult cowboys - those acting in this manner are Muppets.
 
What about a choice for the Solicitor, after he has finished. A 50% refund of the fees or a report to the Law Society. Please don't insult cowboys - those acting in this manner are Muppets.

Its not a good situation, it can happen, its not acceptable but really, why not just take him out and shoot him/her?

This Hang Em High ***** irritates me - it is so deeply unhelpful. PM 1234 had very practical approach and somehope seems to have adopted/followed it through. It appears as if the matter will be resolved. I would imagine there has been an apology.

I don't think the above approach smacks of anything so much as bullying and thuggery by the small man wanting to throw his weight around and seeking to make an already difficult situation worse.

The use of the words Cowboy and Muppets is truly inappropriate.

mf
 
SarahJ,

I went to the Property Registration Authority webpage http://www.prai.ie/eng/ and sent them an email with my portfolio number and details and they got back to me quite quickly. Very friendly and helpful I found them, too.
 
Mf1,
I appreciate your sentiments but I wonder have you ever been kept awake nights worrying because of unacceptable/sloppy work by a solr, with unthinkable consequeences. If people display a complete disregard for professionalism, what else would you call them. If you are in a position of trust then you should respect it, and carry out your work accordingly. Not in a slip shod manner as is prcticed by many. To protect the profession they should be weeded out and the only avenue at this time is the Law Society. This may be ??? a genuine case or it may not who knows? but a sure way of finding out and keep the offender on their toes is to report them.
IMO this sloppy behaviour is rampant.
 
If you ever go onto websites like ratemysolicitor.com ( or whatever it is) you will very quickly form the view that
(a) many of the posters are barking mad
and
(b) many of their complaints are completely unjustified.

Many of the comments on this site/this post, fall into similar brackets. For many people, it is an opportunity to vent their deeply held views in an unbalanced and offensive manner. It is the nature of anonymous websites.

On a decent, mostly thoughtful, and very helpful website like this one, it is to my mind far more helpful for the average poster to get a balanced, "stand back and work it out" approach rather than the Hang Em High road.

mf
 
If you ever go onto websites like ratemysolicitor.com ( or whatever it is) you will very quickly form the view that
(a) many of the posters are barking mad
and
(b) many of their complaints are completely unjustified.

Many of the comments on this site/this post, fall into similar brackets. For many people, it is an opportunity to vent their deeply held views in an unbalanced and offensive manner. It is the nature of anonymous websites.

On a decent, mostly thoughtful, and very helpful website like this one, it is to my mind far more helpful for the average poster to get a balanced, "stand back and work it out" approach rather than the Hang Em High road.

mf

Hear, hear
 
Have to agree with mf1 - it seems like the solicitor has attempted to rectify the situation once they were made aware. Mistakes happen. It's how they are dealt with once the issue is brought to their attention.

Don't worry, champagne doesn't go off that quickly!
 
sam, maybe, but the OP tried to contact the solicitor 'numerous' times. There is no excuse for blatant ignorance, especially when it has been paid for.
 
Hi all,

I do intend to give the solicitor the chance to sort it out. If it is, then I will not take the matter any further. I do appreciate and agree that the legal profession here in Ireland leaves a lot to be desired but I don't have confidence in the Law Society to do anything worthwhile and instructing another solicitor in my view, is just perpetuating a bad system.

But, I will go to hell and high water if he is not good to his word.

I'll post the results to let everyone know the (hopefully) final outcome.

many thanks for all the good advice everyone :).
 
Btw, I agree with Petal, everyone should check the state of their property registrations. It is very simple if you live/are in Dublin. First check the Land Registry, if registered there don't bother with the Registry of Deeds. If not registered in the LR, then you will have to check out the RoD.
 
I feel for you Somehope as the exact same thing happened to me (I posted loads of queries on here about it). We discovered it when we went to sell our apartment and things then spiralled into one massive mess. Our new solicitors were excellent and really earnt their money in sorting out the mess but the whole thing caused undue stress. We got a refund for everything we were charged that was not carried out (after much battling) and the new solicitor then used the money to register the deeds etc. We were lucky that we only had the apartment a year as the maps etc for our apartment were not correct (our apartment was not on them!) so this involved having to go back to the builders solicitor etc who were less than helpful. It was some consolation that more time had not lapsed. Best of luck, it will all be sorted in the end.
 
this happened to my parents on the purchase of their home in 1973.

only came to light in 2006 when they tried to sell.

origianl solicitor, dublin 4 firm still in existence, refused point blank to help..they have receipts etc from the sols at the time.

contacted irish permanent (parents redeemed the mortgage within a 3 month time frame) we still had the origianl bank book etc with all mortgage details in it. they said because it was repaid so quickly they would never have bothered about the registration and the sols would have still had the deeds after only 3 months.

sols eventually sent a letter saying they only kept documnets for 8 years therfore they wouldn't have them anymore!!

we contacted law society and after seeking more clarification from us they wrote to say they were looking into the original solicitors but that legally they were not required to hold docs longer than 8 years!!

NOOO....but they were legally required to register the deeds and the mortgage!!

current solicitor is as lax and slow and really appears to be unhappy to pursue another solicitor.

tryinng to convince my parents to switch sols but they are afraid of jeopardising things as it has been so long going on. they really want to sell up and buy apt in Florida but are stuck here because no deeds!!
 
They are only legally obliged to keep a FILE for a certain amount of time - but is this their argument for not having the deeds to your parents house?? They can't just get rid or lose (sorry to say but this seems to be most likely what has happened) a set of deeds to a house!!. Did they give an explanation as to what they think was done with them or just that they simply don't have them and thats it?! If they were given to them in trust then they must provide an explanation as to what they did with them, its simply not good enough for them to say they "just don't have them"

Your parents should definitely get a new Solicitor if he is not able to resolve this for them and they should put more pressure on the Law Society. Its a very serious situation if they have in fact lost the deeds. There is a way to build the title again from scratch but its takes an awful lot of time and effort.

Have your parents/Solicitor checked with the Land Registry to see what they have to say about it?

My heart goes out to your parents. To think that their retirement plans are being ruined because of this. Really hope its resolved for them soon.
 
Just bear in mind the land registry can also take their time about updating information received in from the solicitors. Just make sure that if he comes back with a dealing number, keep following him up until you get a folio number. he'll be issued with the dealing number once he submits the information but queries can go back and forth between the solicitor and the land reg, if the land reg have queries, and solicitors have been known to be slow about responding to the queries. Once he gets the dealing number, you can ring through to the land reg and double check yourself to make sure he fully completes it
 
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