Cunningtons LLP Solicitors Wickford
Gibraltar Walk
High Street
Wickford
Essex
SS12 9AX
United Kingdom
Tel: 01268 732268
Fax: 01268 732274
Solicitors for Conveyancing, Family Law and Wills & Probate in Wickford
Cunningtons LLP’s Wickford Office was opened in 1989 by our former Managing Partner Paul Fenton, and is now run by Partner Kate Hunt. It is located on Gibraltar Walk, just off the High Street in Wickford. The office provides a comprehensive range of specialist legal advice in all aspects of Residential Conveyancing, Family Law, and Wills and Probate.
If you are selling your home, buying a new home, or simply remortgaging your existing home, our firm of residential conveyancing solicitors make sure that all the legal aspects are taken care of. Click here to request your conveyancing quote.
We have a specialist Family Law team to help with all aspects of marriage, divorce and civil partnerships – including arrangements for children and finance.
And the Wickford branch can also assist with any of your Wills & Probate issues, dealing with Wills, Lasting Powers of Attorney, Probate, and a number of other related issues, providing expert legal advice to ensure you are well-informed and supported.
Kate Hunt
Partner in charge of the Wickford branch
Kate Hunt is the partner in charge of the firm’s Wickford, south Essex office. Kate specialises in residential conveyancing.
Kate first joined Cunningtons in 2003 as a paralegal and qualified as a Solicitor in March 2006, becoming a Partner in 2011.
Kate Hunt can be contacted on 01268 732268
Telephone: 01268 732268
Why Cunningtons?
- Fixed Fees
- Free Conveyancing Quotes
- Personal Contact
- Local Wickford Solicitors
- National Coverage
- Contact by Phone or Email
- Great Reviews
- Award-winning Solicitors
- One of Wickford’s oldest law firms
- Specialist Conveyancers
GET IN TOUCH
To contact us about any of our legal services including Family Law or Wills and Probate,
just complete this form so we can get back to you.
Cunningtons local solicitors in the Wickford office offer you a range of legal services, focusing on Property, Wills & Probate and Family Law.
Residential Conveyancing
Kate Hunt, the Partner at the Wickford office, looks after all aspects of residential property transactions from sale or purchase of both freehold and leasehold properties, re-mortgages, transfers of equity, and agreed lease extensions. Our expertise extends to various legal matters, ensuring comprehensive support for our clients.
Wills & Probate
Cunningtons Will drafting service will help you to understand the forms to be completed and make sure final documents are correctly executed, giving you peace of mind that your affairs will be left in order and avoiding complex intestacy problems. They also help with elder care and Lasting Powers of Attorney.
Family & Matrimonial Law
At Cunningtons Wickford solicitors, we offer a Family & Matrimonial service. We can guide you through all aspects of matrimonial law including pre-nuptial agreements, divorce, civil partnerships, cohabitation agreements, and childcare arrangements.
More about Wickford and Cunningtons solicitors
Cunningtons LLP Wickford offers a dedicated and personalised residential conveyancing service for the local community; we can provide you with a fixed-fee conveyancing quote for your move. As experienced solicitors in Wickford, we also have a Family Law department in branch, and offer assistance with Wills and Probate. We work closely with our other branches, so can provide help with Civil Litigation and Employment Law, as well as Commercial conveyancing.
At the Wickford branch, we believe in the traditional approach of an office which thrives on providing the personal touch with each client’s telephone call being answered by a solicitor or a legal secretary.
We like to bring together the speed and efficiency of the modern world with traditional values of decency and politeness. So we conduct searches and enquiries using electronic means, while we prefer face-to-face and voice contact to deal with our clients – the best of both worlds. Clients regularly comment on the friendliness and efficiency of our service.
Our Wickford client base reaches to Southend-on-Sea, Basildon, Rayleigh, Maldon, Brentwood and Grays. However, our conveyancing solicitors are happy to act in respect of properties based in any other location within England and Wales.
Cunningtons’ widespread branch network enables a swift exchange of legal documents as a Wickford client can entrust their documentation to any other branch office and be sure that any document will be received by their solicitor the next working day.
The small south Essex town of Wickford is situated approximately 30 miles east of London, and is close to Billericay, Laindon, Pitsea, and South and West Hanningfield, and is a commuter town with excellent transport links to London. Also nearby is the picturesque village of Battlesbridge, which home to a number of leading antique dealers.
Wickford Property Solicitors: Helping you with the Legal Side of Moving House
Moving house with the help of a professional property expert is crucial these days, although if you are prepared to take the risk and do your own conveyancing, please go ahead! Most people don’t want to gamble with the sale or purchase of their most valuable asset, and we are trained experts who know how to ensure that everything goes smoothly, and can provide our expert legal services to smooth your move.
The property team at Cunningtons in Wickford provides Conveyancing for buyers and sellers throughout England and Wales, and our expert legal services locally in and around Wickford and south Essex.
Click here to order your free fixed-fee conveyancing quoteWickford solicitors for Family & Matrimonial Law
Family & Matrimonial Law is not just about the bad times, and our team helps people with aspects of setting up a formal relationship such as pre-nuptial and cohabiting agreements.
Unfortunately, there are times when people talk to us about divorce, separation, and relationship breakdown that can start with domestic violence and coercive control.
We are aware that if a relationship doesn’t work out the people who suffer the most are children, and our team is focussed on ensuring that children are at the heart of any separation. This includes ensuring that contact between both parents and children is taken care of appropriately.
As an obvious offshoot of our divorce service, we provide help to assess the financial implications of a split – the costs of ending a relationship can make life difficult.
We also assist with the legal side of adoption and guardianship.
Contact the Wickford Family Law team for a confidential chatWills and Probate
Everyone needs an up-to-date Will, although many want to wait until they are just about to die. No-one knows when they will need their Will, but dying without a simple Will is very unfair to those who care for you – and dying intestate makes a bad situation even worse.
At Cunningtons in Wickford we can help you make your Will, store it (included in the price), and assist with probate when it needs to be executed. We also assist with deputyships, advance directives, and lasting powers of attorney, as well as planning for inheritance tax and setting up trusts.
So don’t leave it any longer: contact us about your Will today. It won’t kill youFrequently Asked Questions
Here are some questions that our Wickford branch gets asked: if you need an answer to a question that is not on this list, please contact us for an answer.
What happens in the conveyancing process?
Conveyancing is the legal process of transferring property, and it happens whenever UK property is bought, sold or remortgaged.
The conveyancing process for each transaction is different, and generally involves liaising between buyers, sellers, mortgage companies, local councils and the Land Registry.
If you are buying property:
We contact the seller’s solicitors to check the title deeds and contract, then conduct a variety of searches depending on the location, check the formal mortgage offer, collect together documents that require signing, organise the handing over the deposit, ensure all monies are in the right accounts, arrange completion of sale, ensure the correct stamp duty is paid, instruct the land registry of the change in ownership, then send the deeds to either the buyer or the mortgage lender.
If you are selling property:
We obtain the title deeds and up-to-date information from the Land Registry, arrange the contracts that outline the sale, liaise with the buyer’s solicitors, find out the balance on your mortgage if necessary, send deeds for signing, arrange for estate agents’ fees to be paid, collect all funds due to the seller, submit statements and send dees and keys to the new owner.
If you are remortgaging:
We obtain the title deeds and up-to-date title copy from Land Registry, deal with any searches, receive mortgage offer, ask you to sign mortgage deed, arrange for the delivery of the new loan, get up-to-date statement from current lender, run searches at the Land Registry, receive the loan and repay existing mortgage, and register the new mortgage with the Land Registry.
In brief, conveyancing has a number of stages and differs according to the purpose of the transaction, the finances of the buyer/seller/remortgager, the geographical location of the property, and the number of other transactions in the chain.
Talk to your conveyancing solicitor throughout the process and they’ll keep you up to date with this important process.
What is the difference between a solicitor and a conveyancer?
When you use a solicitor for conveyancing you can be sure that they are regulated by the Solicitors’ Regulation Authority (SRA), a member of the Law Society, have degree-level qualifications and at least two years on the job training before qualifying as a conveyancing solicitor.
Whereas a conveyancer tends to be regulated by the Council for Licenced Conveyancers (CLC) and is usually less highly qualified, although can still be perfectly competent.
What searches does a conveyancer do?
The standard searches your conveyancing solicitor undertakes are:
– local authority,
– water/drainage, and
– environmental.
There are a number of other searches to undertake depending on the locality of the property. For example, in mining areas a mining search is also always obtained. There may also searches for Gypsum in areas where gypsum mining has taken place, Lead Mining, China Clay, and Limestone.
Check with your property solicitor to find out which searches they are intending to undertake.
When I ask for a conveyancing quote, do I have to pay anything?
All our conveyancing quotes are free and you are not obliged to use our conveyancing services.
However, we have found that most people who receive a quotation for our conveyancing services are happy to use us and remain loyal customers for future moves!
Is there a difference between freehold and leasehold conveyancing?
The short answer is yes.
When dealing with leasehold transactions, there are many more things to check during the conveyancing process, including ground rent, service charges, licences under the Lease and leasehold covenants (obligations).
For this reason we charge an additional fee for dealing with leasehold transactions.
Should I use an online conveyancing company?
We do not generally recommend using an online conveyancer; although you often pay a lower fee, the level of service will also be lower.
You will rarely speak to the same person twice, and you have to be wary of the extras they add on.
When you are dealing with something as valuable as your home, it is important not to take risks. And the potential small savings to be made by using online conveyancing don’t add up – yet. You should meet the solicitor who is working on your case face-to-face.
How do I avoid fraudulent transactions when moving house?
With such large amounts of money changing hands, there can be attempts to steal them in transit.
It is easy to avoid fraud if you follow simple rules:
1 – Never ever disclose bank account details by email.
2 – Never pay money into an account whose details you have received by email.
3 – Both you and your solicitor should pay into accounts whose details you have received by phone or in person.
4 – Ideally, test the veracity of bank account details by making an initial payment of £1 – which you then verify by telephoning your conveyancing solicitor – before paying any more.
How long does conveyancing take?
As most home moves depend on a number of different factors, it is impossible to predict how long your conveyancing will take. However, on average the process will usually take about 8 weeks for a freehold property, and slightly longer for a leasehold.
But as there can be a number of transactions going on at the same time, usually with a chain of strangers all buying and selling their homes and getting mortgages in place – the process rarely depends on just one person.
That’s why moving home is a great time to practice calm and patience, as it is out of your control.
FURTHER INFORMATION
More information about the services offered at our Wickford branch
Conveyancing Done Right
What is conveyancing, how long does it take, and what can go wrong? We guide you through your choices
Jargon Buster
There’s a lot of jargon involved in the world of conveyancing, so we have put together a list of the most common terms, with explanations.
Wickford Partner Profile
Kate Hunt is the Partner in Charge of the Wickford branch. Find out more about her.