Provide clients with accurate costs estimates for administering estates, or risk a challenge from disgruntled beneficiaries, warns Kris Kilsby
- Solicitors must ensure that accurate estimates for administering estates are provided and that beneficiaries are kept informed of the costs being incurred.
- Failure to do so may leave solicitors open to challenges from unhappy beneficiaries and a reduction in costs recovered.
The decision of Costs Judge Brown in Kenig v Thomson Snell & Passmore LLP [2023] Lexis Citation 357 is an important one for all solicitors who practise in the administration of estates, as it may have opened the door for beneficiaries to bring applications under s 71 of the Solicitors Act 1974 (SA 1974).
The claimant and his sister were the sole beneficiaries of their late mother’s estate in this matter. The defendant solicitors were retained by the sole executor of the will and the deceased’s brother, who played no active part in the application.
There was a formal engagement letter between the executor and the defendant solicitors which set out the likely costs to be incurred.
