Folks,
I have no idea how common it is for solicitors to 'insert' themselves as executors. I never do and have on more than a few occasions over the years had to refuse where the client wanted it and the circumstances manifestly suited, because I am not prepared to be accused of favouring myself over beneficiaries. I would say in general that the solicitor-prompted insertion happens rather more often than I would like, but far less often than one would imagine from reading this thread.
I will also say this: Bronte's perception ( if I may paraphrase it) that 'solicitors generally are not great but my fellow is alright' is a very common attititude among clients. My perception is that a very small number of bad apples have given a stinking PR problem to the vast majority of hard working solicitors.
Brendan, the idea that " If there is a need for a solicitor it suggests that the will is too complicated and needs to be simplified......." is just too simplistic. Sometimes a will has to be complex, because people's circumstances warrant the complexity. Among those who certainly need a solicitor to prepare their will and subsequently to help administer their estate are:
Parents of minor children.
Parents of warring adult siblings.
Those who may have estates sufficient to trigger large inheritance tax bills. I can show you estates where - without in any way altering the ultimate distribution of an estate - one wording of a will could generate a large inheritance tax bill while another wording could totally avoid such a liability.
Many simple wills can indeed be administered without the help of a solicitor. Alternatively, the work can be subbed out to a solicitor in discrete chunks. I have often done a simple probate where I got out the grant of probate at a fee of circa €1200. This fee was to simply go through the process of getting the grant - leaving it to the client to deal with the assets. Certainly it would have been cheaper for the client to do this themselves - but my fee was perceived as value, which is the whole point.
Where things come unstuck is the client who insists that he\she 'only wants a few simple forms processed' [and yes - I have been stung this way more than once] but then expects you to sort out a land lease with the farmer who had the land from the deceased for the last few years, sort out the single farm payment; get the herd number transferred; deal with a claim by department of social welfare for overpaid means-tested benefits which the deceased previously had, check if there is a tax refund from last year, track down the priest mentioned in the will for masses rather than just give the money to the current pp, write to ten beneficiaries to get details of their previous inheritances in sufficient detail to correctly fill out the revenue returns, possibly end up filing inheritance tax returns for some of those beneficiaries arising from the present inheritance; field phone calls from ten other beneficiaries because executor can't be bothered keeping them up to date, find out how much the deceased got for a site sold three years before death etc. etc.
Many solicitors, myself included, will conduct an initial probate consultation by asking:
A. Do you need to extract probate at all?
B. Do you need the services of a solicitor to do so?
And only if it becomes clear that client either answers yes to both questions will we open a file for the matter.
It is unfortunate that some posters seem to have had bad experience with the probate process; I would like to think that not all of this was the fault of solicitors. Sometimes life is just complex and convoluted.
I have no idea how common it is for solicitors to 'insert' themselves as executors. I never do and have on more than a few occasions over the years had to refuse where the client wanted it and the circumstances manifestly suited, because I am not prepared to be accused of favouring myself over beneficiaries. I would say in general that the solicitor-prompted insertion happens rather more often than I would like, but far less often than one would imagine from reading this thread.
I will also say this: Bronte's perception ( if I may paraphrase it) that 'solicitors generally are not great but my fellow is alright' is a very common attititude among clients. My perception is that a very small number of bad apples have given a stinking PR problem to the vast majority of hard working solicitors.
Brendan, the idea that " If there is a need for a solicitor it suggests that the will is too complicated and needs to be simplified......." is just too simplistic. Sometimes a will has to be complex, because people's circumstances warrant the complexity. Among those who certainly need a solicitor to prepare their will and subsequently to help administer their estate are:
Parents of minor children.
Parents of warring adult siblings.
Those who may have estates sufficient to trigger large inheritance tax bills. I can show you estates where - without in any way altering the ultimate distribution of an estate - one wording of a will could generate a large inheritance tax bill while another wording could totally avoid such a liability.
Many simple wills can indeed be administered without the help of a solicitor. Alternatively, the work can be subbed out to a solicitor in discrete chunks. I have often done a simple probate where I got out the grant of probate at a fee of circa €1200. This fee was to simply go through the process of getting the grant - leaving it to the client to deal with the assets. Certainly it would have been cheaper for the client to do this themselves - but my fee was perceived as value, which is the whole point.
Where things come unstuck is the client who insists that he\she 'only wants a few simple forms processed' [and yes - I have been stung this way more than once] but then expects you to sort out a land lease with the farmer who had the land from the deceased for the last few years, sort out the single farm payment; get the herd number transferred; deal with a claim by department of social welfare for overpaid means-tested benefits which the deceased previously had, check if there is a tax refund from last year, track down the priest mentioned in the will for masses rather than just give the money to the current pp, write to ten beneficiaries to get details of their previous inheritances in sufficient detail to correctly fill out the revenue returns, possibly end up filing inheritance tax returns for some of those beneficiaries arising from the present inheritance; field phone calls from ten other beneficiaries because executor can't be bothered keeping them up to date, find out how much the deceased got for a site sold three years before death etc. etc.
Many solicitors, myself included, will conduct an initial probate consultation by asking:
A. Do you need to extract probate at all?
B. Do you need the services of a solicitor to do so?
And only if it becomes clear that client either answers yes to both questions will we open a file for the matter.
It is unfortunate that some posters seem to have had bad experience with the probate process; I would like to think that not all of this was the fault of solicitors. Sometimes life is just complex and convoluted.
