solicitor looking for unpaid fees 6 years after house sale

Morals don't come into it.

I was in court one day and a solicitor said to a debtor, "You have a moral obligation to pay your debts". The judge interjected "Morals don't come into it, the law does!"
 
If I had genuinely overlooked a bill payment, and the debt was now statute barred I certainly wouldn't make any attempt to pay. I wouldn't have any internal moral conflict either.

There are plenty of legal procedures/regulations which often appear to be not particularly fair to the aggrieved party but we all have to abide by them.

This is just another one, except in this case the solicitor loses out.

Edit: crossed with Bond-007
 
mf1 said:
Appealing to their better nature!

mf
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MF1 - if the OP approached you looking for legal advice in this matter what would you say? (assuming the facts are as laid out - and I know that you feel they are incomplete)
 
efm said:
MF1 - if the OP approached you looking for legal advice in this matter what would you say? (assuming the facts are as laid out - and I know that you feel they are incomplete)
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I suspect you already know my answer!

mf
 
Would that be advice based on morals and/or loyalty to your brothers in the trade?
 
What is the reason for debts being statute barred. To protect people from unexpected bills years later I imagine, for which they now have no budget etc. If my plumber/roofer/electrician came to me with a bill for a couple of grand for work down more than six years ago how many of you legal eagles would advise me to pay it? Bills should be sent out promptly in any profession and there is no excuse for not doing so, certainly not a couple of years later nor six years later for which there is absolutely no excuse.
 
The OP has not said that they cannot afford to pay the bill. They did say that they moved address at least once in the meantime and the solicitors apparently tried to contact them at their old address.

Sorry, I find it amazing that people will try to weasel out of paying their debts if a combination of human error and the law allows them to do so. Would the same logic apply to evaded tax debts over 6 years old, where there is no such statute of limitations?
 
Whether it is the law being 'abided by' or 'used' is only a matter of perspective IMO.

Many people can be accused of 'hiding behind the law' or whatever in a multitude of simple or complex legal scenarios - solicitors included.

How many people here have been flabbergasted or infuriated to discover that some 'law' impedes/prevents etc what they see as a totally reasonable course of action or practice?

By the way I never, ever, pay for something I have not been billed for and I would not expect my customers to do so either.
 
ubiquitous said:
Would the same logic apply to evaded tax debts over 6 years old, where there is no such statute of limitations?
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Do you apply your logic to people who legally avoid paying tax through tax loopholes, created inadvertantly by mistakes or omissions by Revenue and legislators?

The law is the law in this land and thankfully morals or pegoratives don't come into it. If someone bills me for something six years late I would have no moral problem with telling them to go swing for it!
 
efm said:
Do you apply your logic to people who legally avoid paying tax through tax loopholes, created inadvertantly by mistakes or omissions by Revenue and legislators?
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The Revenue have extensive legal powers and can use a battery of legislation and technical support whenever they wish to challenge taxpayers whom they deem to have improperly avoided tax through the misuse of tax incentives and loopholes. As a taxpayer I don't have any problem with this.

Its worth noting that Revenue are not restricted by time limits in pursuing such cases.

However I do have a serious problem with the "four year rule" restriction that they use to prevent taxpayers from recovering overpaid tax etc. I consider this to be a legalised form of theft by the State from its own citizens - certainly one aspect of the law where in your own words "morals or pegoratives don't come into it".
 
bond-007 said:
If you have a problem with the law, you know what to do about it then.
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...which presumably is to lobby for its repeal? This is exactly what the accountancy institutes (including the institute of whom I am a member) and consumer groups have done in recent years, without success so far unfortunately.
 
I also agree that the four year revenue rule is unfair. I think that if they can go back forever then the tax payer should also be allowed go back forever and get interest too. Why not, lots of people miss out on claiming allowances because they don't know anything about it and revenue do nothing to make the system simple so that it would be virtually impossible to not complete the correct tax return. This has however nothing to do with a debt being statute barred, to those of you who say the bill should be paid, would you say the same if it was 20 years old, maybe they should pay for the interest on the bill in the meantime too, would that be the moral thing to do? I have no problem paying any bill I have, but I don't want one to arrive out of the blue six years hence for which I have not budgeted, particularly should it be a substantial bill which in general legal bills are.
 
ubiquitous;696122the solicitors apparently tried to contact them at their old address.[/quote said:
They did not try too hard.
They could have contacted their land lord for a forwarding address.
Their Mother who transferred the house to them.
Or even tried the new house!
etc
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Towger said:
They did not try too hard.
They could have contacted their land lord for a forwarding address.
Their Mother who transferred the house to them.
Or even tried the new house!
etc
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Solicitors are traditionally very bad at following up unpaid bills. Have been reviewing a number of files and sending reminders for bills that are 3 or 4 years overdue. Have already got a response from one client saying that since the bill is over 3 years old he isn't paying it.
 

Of course if they were rational enough to demand payment upfront, they would be accused of all sorts of things like "feathering their own nests" and "ripping off" their clients.
 
If solictors were properly organised in their invoicing, as most other businesses are and need to be, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

ubiquitous said:
Of course if they were rational enough to demand payment upfront, they would be accused of all sorts of things like "feathering their own nests" and "ripping off" their clients.
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I don't understand why you consider it rational for solicitors to demand payment upfront; standard business practice is payment on delivery so why should solicitors be different?
 

Legal services are quite different from buying a washing machine. You cannot take the legal services back to the shop if someone refuses to pay you. Once you have provided your service you hope the client will pay. In most cases they do.
 
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