Non-contentious probate

Jemma Trust Company Ltd v Forrester and another (SCCO 12 September unreported)

In a ground-breaking decision, Master Rogers held that a solicitor’s charges for administering a large estate should no longer be based on both hourly rates and an additional element in respect of value, but if he were wrong there should be a reducing scale based on Maltby v D J Freeman & Co [1978] 1 WLR 431. The estate in question was worth just over £9m for the administration of which the solicitor had elected to charge on the basis of an hourly rate for work carried out and, in addition, he charged 1.5% of the gross value of the estate (save for the house, which was charged at 0.5%) as a value element. This resulted in a value element of £227,000 in addition to the hourly rate charges. The master concluded that now hourly rates are calculated invariably on the basis of sophisticated time recording material, it is anachronistic and wrong to include an additional element in respect of value. He recognised that this was a bold decision for a judge to make at his judicial level but he was satisfied in this sort of situation that the solicitors should charge either an hourly rate or on the basis of value, but not both. By charging a percentage of the estate, and in addition all the hours that had been claimed, it seemed to him that the solicitors would be overpaid for what he accepted was not an easy estate to wind up. If he were to be held to be wrong he would hold that the lower percentages suggested for the parts of the estate which were worth more than the maximum figure quoted in Maltby should be adopted and there was logic in the figures that had been put to him as follows: