Solicitor woes HEADS UP

Grawns

Long story short, my solicitor could be a Micheal Lynn ( or a total incompetent). We recently heard he was retiring and on checking with the bank I found the deeds had never been lodged (bought 8 years ago). The same thing has happened to my sister bought 3 years ago) and both our houses are still registered to the last owner and my sisters house still has the previous owners mortgage liened on it. He is solictor to a number of family friends too and they are in the same position. ( was a friend of Dad's for 40 years)

We can't ask him about the location of the deeds as this would mean our files would probably vanish.
We have a new solictor who is trying to get our files ( we're playing nice until we have to get the Law society after him). Hopefullly the deeds will still be in the file.

Anyways the reason I'm posting is not to ask for advice as I have a new solictor to help me there . I fully intend to sue him for any costs I encur putting things to right ( also the law society will take over if it turns out to be fraud rather than the incompetence I'm hoping for).


The reason I'm posting is to say;
Everyone who has a mortgage for more than 2 or 3 years. Pick up the phone, call your bank and ask them if they have the deeds. they can tell you within a minute. If they don't have them start asking questions.

craichoe

Grawns wrote: »

Long story short, my solicitor could be a Micheal Lynn ( or a total incompetent). We recently heard he was retiring and on checking with the bank I found the deeds had never been lodged (bought 8 years ago). The same thing has happened to my sister bought 3 years ago) and both our houses are still registered to the last owner and my sisters house still has the previous owners mortgage liened on it. He is solictor to a number of family friends too and they are in the same position. ( was a friend of Dad's for 40 years)

We can't ask him about the location of the deeds as this would mean our files would probably vanish.
We have a new solictor who is trying to get our files ( we're playing nice until we have to get the Law society after him). Hopefullly the deeds will still be in the file.

Anyways the reason I'm posting is not to ask for advice as I have a new solictor to help me there . I fully intend to sue him for any costs I encur putting things to right ( also the law society will take over if it turns out to be fraud rather than the incompetence I'm hoping for).


The reason I'm posting is to say;
Everyone who has a mortgage for more than 2 or 3 years. Pick up the phone, call your bank and ask them if they have the deeds. they can tell you within a minute. If they don't have them start asking questions.

http://www.propertywisebulgaria.com/article/michael-lynn-ordered-to-pay-back-13m-euro/id_2695/catid_31

Good look getting money out of him, i'd say your in a long queue

jor el

craichoe wrote: »

http://www.propertywisebulgaria.com/article/michael-lynn-ordered-to-pay-back-13m-euro/id_2695/catid_31

Good look getting money out of him, i'd say your in a long queue

I don't think the solicitor mentioned is actually Michael Lynn, but a Lynn-a-like, if you will.

craichoe

jor el wrote: »

I don't think the solicitor mentioned is actually Michael Lynn, but a Lynn-a-like, if you will.

Lol ... didnt even see that

Grawns

No his name isn't in the papers YET! There is a solicitor who has a high court injunction against being named at the moment. Could be him. He retired very suddenly, shut his office ( the law society knew nothing of this apparently) and his other staff opened a new office the next day. When my dad tried to get our files ( as we didn't want to go to the new firm) he said he wasn't retiring at all. Call me paranoid but....

Oryx

Its good to remind people to check on their solicitors, they used to be people you would automatically trust, but thats been shown to be a bad idea. I think since the Michael Lynn debacle, there has been a bit of a scatter in the legal profession to sort out any -shall we say- unfinished business. Like your guy suddenly changing his business or retiring or whatever it is. (I wish you luck with that by the way)

My own solicitor is honest (I think:o) but even his firm all of a sudden sent me a refund of about 90 quid overpaid on our file, out of the blue after two years, when the ML thing happened. Did strike me as if they did an internal audit to make sure all was straight in their firm.

Grawns

I had no idea until this happened that they could do so much business and transactions based on trust! The banks must be freaking out. That said mine (BOI) didn't seem bothered whereas my sister's ( IIB) immediately called the Law Society.

Another thing I did when this came to light was get a credit report just to make sure he hadn't done anything in my name. That came back clean. Phew!

NUTLEY BOY

Doubtless your new solicitor will attend to it but you would want to be sure that no unintended lienings or the like have been registered against the title to your property !

Your solicitor can check this directly with Registry of Deeds / Land Registry (I think which one depends on where you are geographically) and does not need the title deeds to do this.

If you find anything untoward registered against your property your next call will be to the Gardai who might be able to find your deeds for you whilst executing a search warrant for your old solicitor's offices !!

Grawns

They checked and my house is lien free but my sisters house has the previous owners mortgage still liened against it. This is most likely because he didn't do his job as their solicitor ( the prior owners that is ) would have most likely sent him a proof of discharge. I don't think the guards can enter and seize files but the law society can. However he has retired! and we're playing nice at the moment.

Here's the irony, originally he offered for us to pick up our files however when we asked to do so ( on our new solicitors advice) he said he couldn't as he could only hand them over to another solicitor as the files related to property deeds.

If everything had been done as it should ( the deeds registered and placed with mortgager),there would have been no legal reason why he couldn't hand them over. Everyone is playing dumb at the moment but it's been over a week now so I may make a phonecall tommorrow to my new solictor tommorrow.

Another irony is that We had just released equity ( remortgaged) from another house to pay my house (ex-council County Clare) off in full. ( €100,006). The cheque was sent to us directly as we have close contacts with a particular branch of EBS. This is on hold ( but the cheques good for 6 months).

:mad:

Grawns

Well he's been sent two strongly worded letters and 3 weeks later not a peep. My new solicitor called today and he's contacting the law society on both me and my sisters behalf. What I found out is a complete bummer. It turns out that as I bought my house in 2000 I am outside the statute of limitations on breach of contract ( 7 years). My sister can sue him for breach of contract but at this stage I'm swinging in the wind.

Grawns

Latest news. Well he finally made it into the papers so he is in serous trouble. Other good news ( I hope). My new soliictor informs me that It seems he has contracted a 3rd party solicitor to put thing right with our files. Probably under direction from the law society. Might not cost me too much now.