Conduct and service

Brothers at war

Perhaps the most common cause of difficulties in the administration of estates is bad feeling among members of the deceased's family.

This rancour often spills over into solicitors' dealings with administration.

They find themselves caught up in the whole unpleasant, and sometimes impossible, situation.

The solicitors then find accusations, often unjustified, being levelled against them.

But sometimes they fail to help themselves by ensuring they explain the realities to their complaining client.

Simple animosity is bad enough, but consider a situation where a father appointed one of two brothers to be his co-executor with his solicitor, though the other brother had had control of his father's affairs for two years before his death.

The inevitable happened - the executor started accusing his brother of mismanagement of the father's affairs, and, in effect, dissipating the assets.

This was a speculative allegation.

However, when the solicitor refused to spend estate money on an investigation, this enraged the brother/executor who then began to bombard the solicitors with long letters.

The solicitors answered each point the first time it was raised, but ignored any future reference to the same points.

While that may have been understandable, it did nothing to ease the situation and led only to further letters.

It then transpired that the client construed his letters as formal complaints and accused the solicitor of ignoring them.

Circumstances such as these are taxing and difficult, and great care must be taken with them.

Nobody can realistically expect a busy practising solicitor to have to deal with inordinate and repetitive demands.

But equally, it is a mistake to ignore them altogether.

All that achieves is an escalation of the number of letters, telephone calls, e-mails and faxes.

It might not have solved the problem, but may have helped and certainly would have protected the solicitor's back, had he written to the co-executor, explaining that there was no point in continually going over old ground and that to do so was against the interests of the residuary beneficiaries (including the co-executor), as the letters would be charged for and the cost would have to come out of the estate.

There is perhaps no situation as bad as when members of the same family fall out.

The solicitor has the effective administration of the estate in his hands and he will be facing sometimes fierce and opposing demands from both sides.

In those situations, it is essential that the solicitor maintains a firm line.

In particular, he should ensure that the client (the executor/s) is told why no response will be sent to letters that merely seek to go over old ground.

This may not prevent a complaint, but will give the solicitor a better chance of persuading the Office for the Supervision of Solicitors that the complaint against him has no validity.

Every case before the adjudication panel is decided on its individual facts.

This case study is for illustration only and should not be treated as a precedent