Re: How crap is this lawyer?


"The Todal" <deadmailbox@xxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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<nospam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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My wife's mother recently lost her husband.
Their house was in his name but (sigh), he had no life insurance.
A lawyer has successfully transferred the deeds of the house to the
surviving wife.
The wife approached the mortgage company to update the name on the
mortgage
and was informed that she would need to remortgage for this to happen.
She
has been paying the mortgage since her husband's death and gobsmackingly
was
not advised by her lawyer that she would be expected to remortgage after
the
deed transfer went ahead. She has since gone back to the lawyer after
talking to the mortgage company and he merely said he'd done what she
wanted
him to do so he's no longer interested.

How callous and cold-hearted can this lawyer be to take almost £2k of a
financially poor widow's money, so soon after losing her husband, without
informing her that she would be expected to raise a mortgage herself on
the
property?

Why is it the lawyer's fault?

He has done what he was asked to do. If he had said "but the bank will
want you to apply for a new mortgage in your name" how would she have
acted differently?


My further thoughts are: 2k seems a hefty sum to pay, and she should have
obtained competitive quotes from other conveyancing solicitors. And I can't
help wondering whether she might have been to blame. She *should* have gone
to her solicitor and said: now that my husband has died, do I need to do
anything about changing the name on the title deeds? To which the answer
would have been "no, not at this time" (if it was a different answer,
consider claiming against the solicitor).

If instead she went to him and said "I want you to change the name on the
deeds. Now. I don't care if it's not necessary, I'd be happier if you could
just go ahead and do it" then this is what happens when clients act on their
own legal advice.


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