COMMERCIAL estimates:
New short leases, including usual enquiries and searches (no registration): £1,000
Note: The above lease work comprises doing all the legal work for you (reviewing the draft lease and reporting to you on it, suggesting amendments to suit your requirements, carrying out pre-contract searches and reporting on the results, raising enquiries with the landlord through their lawyerand reporting to you on the replies, completing the lease and either sending you a copy and keeping the original here for safekeeping or sending you the original – as you prefer
New short leases, no enquiries, searches or registration: £800 – This involves doing all the above but without carrying out searches or raising enquiries – in which case, we will need you to complete a disclaimer form: LocalSearch&EnquiriesDisclaimer
Reviewing and reporting (only) to the tenant on a proposed new short lease: £500 – £600 – only reviewing the draft lease and reporting to you on its terms, leaving you to deal with the landlord direct on all other issues
Goodwill-only sales and purchases: £1,200 + disbursements
Purchase or sale of public houses and restaurants: Freehold properties: £2,200, leasehold properties: £2,700, in each case + disbursements (this includes the fee for a conveyancer to handle the conveyancing paperwork in liaison with us)
Share purchase agreements: £5,000 – £6,000 + disbursements + property costs
Shareholder agreements and partnership agreements: £2,000
Ts&Cs: for non-Web-based businesses, between £800 and £1,200; for web-based businesses, between £1,400 and £1,800.
WILLS AND POWERS OF ATTORNEY
Wills
An individual straightforward Will or straightforward Wills for a married couple/civil partnership: about £300
More complicated Wills (for instance, those involving the creation of trusts or tax-saving schemes) tend to cost more, but we will warn you if, in your case, these indications are likely to be exceeded.
In addition, there may be out-of-pocket expenses, but these are rare, and we will warn you in advance of them. The main possibilities are Land Registry fees (if ownership of a property has to be checked or adjusted), Companies Registry fees (if shares in a private company are to be left by Will), etc
For “Love Tenterden” cardholders – Wills within a week (plus discounted fees)
We will draft reasonably straightforward Wills for scheme cardholder individuals or married couples/civil partners within a week of an initial meeting. If they are approved and signed by the cardholders within a further week, the cardholders will be eligible to a 5% discount off the bill: typically reducing the bill to about £285
Lasting Powers of Attorney
We recommend clients to complete the power of attorney and registration documentation themselves, if possible, to save unnecessary fees. The documents can be downloaded from the DirectGovwebsite – do not use www.publicguardian.co.uk: it is a commercial site; you will end up paying unnecessarily, and you cannot be sure that the up-to-date forms are supplied
If we prepare the power of attorney and apply for registration, we normally charge £400 for each power of attorney (including its registration)
In addition, the Public Guardian’s office charges a registration fee of £110 per power of attorney
PROBATE work:
Involving assisting executors/ administrators making an application for a grant of probate or letters of administration and generally in winding up an estate.
Our fee depends entirely on the amount of work involved, which can vary hugely from case to case
Our charging rate is £200 per hour
As a rule of thumb, we reckon the “average” estate (if there is such a thing) involves about 10 hours’ work up to the grant of probate, and usually a little less from that point to the conclusion
A good starting budget is, therefore £3,000 to £4,000 plus disbursements (probate fee of £50, creditors’ advertisement of about £200, etc) for an uncomplicated estate or a “small estate” (below the IHT threshold).
However, once we have had a chance to see what is likely to be involved, we will revise that estimate – upwards or downwards, as appropriate – but it will still be an estimate, not a fixed fee. We will not significantly exceed the estimate without warning and explaining why
Factors likely to increase the work and therefore the fees include –
- Several executors
- Specific and/or pecuniary legacies
- Several residuary beneficiaries
- Trusts or minority interests
- Chargeable lifetime gifts
- Foreign assets
- Disputes over the Will’s provisions or lack of them
- Inability of the executors to agree on a course of action
- Missing (or believed missing) assets or papers
- Tax problems (we do not handle tax issues, except inheritance tax, but would need to liaise with accountants
This does not include any associated conveyancing or other additional work