Solicitor fees for probate

Wquirke1234

I recently had a relative who passed away without a will. A solicitor was employed to sort out his affairs and his cash account credits amounted to 250,000 euros. After all of the debits were sorted by the solicitor including probate fees to the probates office, folio plans for land registry, funeral expenses etc, the solicitors fees for probate amounted to over 22,000. Her house or land hasn't been sold yet.

Before I meet with the solicitor to discuss, can I get opinions as to whether this amount is typically to be expected?

Thanks

TooTired123

You don’t say what the funeral bill alone was. Also when you say 22,000 does that include money owed to Revenue, HSE, SW etc?

Wquirke1234

Funeral expenses were 5k. All outstanding bills paid and tax clearance cert issued. 22k is just for the fees owed to solicitor.

endofrainbow

sounds like a lot - can you ask for a breakdown?

wildwillow

Some solicitors charge a percentage of the estate. Mine wanted this and when I refused he handed the probate to a more junior member of staff. It was fairly complicated but cost a fraction of the original quote, and it was easier to communicate with the woman who took over.

You should have agreed a fee before the work was done. Try to bargain them down and ask for a breakdown of hours spent on the work.

If you are selling the land and house and distributing those funds, the work isn’t complete.

You don’t need to use the same solicitor for conveyance of those properties.

Always discuss the cost first.

Wquirke1234

Thanks. It's not for me. I'm helping out an elderly relative and this has only come to my attention. It just seems an astronomical amount to me.

Heighway61

I'm just beginning the probate process. That figure scares me.

Weren't percentage based fees stopped for some solicitor work? It's all paperwork.

Geuze

Many sol in Ireland charge extremely high fees (this explains their huge incomes).

The solution is either to shop around, or do the probate yourself.

Heighway61

Is there a going rate for probate? Would a request for a flat fee be entertained?

The Continental Op

Whats involved with probate in Ireland? I did probate for my father in the UK and it was fairly straight forward, get all the information on money in the bank, investments, premium bonds, valuables and house/contents valuation, fire all that into a tax form and a probate form and send it off to the probate office with death cert and copy of the will. You then get probate granted iirc after you have paid any tax liabilities. Only thing that slowed it up for me was NS&I took about 2 months and a load of back and forth to get info on premium bond holding. Whole process took about 4 months. My mother is still alive but because of past experience I have all the info on hand already (have power of attorney) so could do the paper work in a couple of hours and get it sent off. If probate office are as swift as they were 4 years ago I could have the whole thing sorted in under a month but I've heard there is a bit of a backlog so might not be that lucky.