Retrieval of Deeds -Scrivener fee.

[Dadutte]

Several years ago, I was bequeathed a house from my late mother, the Deeds of the house were held by her solicitor in his Safe. All fees had been paid to solicitor after the extraction of my late mother’s Grant of Probate. Earlier this year I decided to sell the house & when I called the solicitor’s office to arranged to go & collect the Deeds & associated papers, I told that the Solicitor had retired & a new solicitor had taken over the business ( I had not been informed of the change of ownership). I then was told I would have to pay a ‘Scrivener Fee’ (€123) to retrieve my Deeds ( would not release my Deeds etc until I paid the money). I had no choice but to pay the €123 to him, all that the solicitor did was to open the Safe & hand Me my file (nothing was copied or rewritten, just 2 receipts- that I had to sign -1 for solicitor & 1 for me). Would like to known if this is common practice to have to pay the‘Scrivener.

 

[mf1]

It's not a lot of money?

You had free storage of your Deeds for several years. Presumably, you were instructing another firm to handle the sale. The solicitor might have waived the fee if they were getting the sale.

And, at the very least, the solicitor had to check that they did, in fact, have the Deeds and had to arrange to schedule them and have receipts typed.

Most solicitors, contrary to the commonly held belief that they are bloodsucking parasites, are actually very bad at charging properly for routine matters like this.

mf