That's great news, Scrappy!

Great news and a welcome relief, Scrappy!

Also enjoying the typical Monday here. The substantial amount of work an editor promised me would be ready to assign this morning since it's due finished by end of Wednesday? Not here and only trickling in throughout the day in tiny drops. Oh, and one of the three days I'd slated a subcontractor to work on it this week is apparently a national holiday in India.

It would be the solicitor/rental agent we've been dealing with (side note: this is the same solicitor who had settled Tom's mother's estate, and one of the reasons I wish they'd have just kept collecting the rent in lieu of us making a payment on the estate settling is because of the craziness.)

So, the tenant pays the solicitor in St. Andrews. The solicitor transfers half of the rent payment to Tom's dad (in the UK, so no problem). The other half, up until now, has been held to cover Tom's mother's end of life expenses and estate settlement expenses.

England has some pretty freaking hardcore anti-terrorism banking laws in effect which is, I think, some of the source of the issue.

So can the solicitor just transfer the money in pounds to our account in New Orleans and it shows up as dollars at whatever currency conversion is happening that day? Since they are not a bank, I am not sure where a wire transfer would be initiated. If we had a UK bank account I think they could do a regular direct deposit, and then we could deal with the wire transfer between both bank accounts?

I don't even know.

Typo, we can opens a US account, it's the UK account that we are having trouble with. Also, what kind of transfers are you talking about? Stephanie, so if the solicitor sends us a paper check (in pounds) we could just deposit it in our American bank account? Also, I don't see these solicitors doing much by way of sending us the money, they don't really need anything from us, so their motivation to help us out is low.

And if he can find one that's been hanging around for 13 or so years open, we still don't know how to get the money from that account into our US account.

Um, I have an account that I opened in 1994. I never closed it. It had like £5 in it, so it may have been closed for me.

Also, do either of you have an American Express card? They deal with international transfers a lot. Even without a card, they may be able to be helpful.

Nora, looks like you should be able to deposit a check in pounds, it might just be slow?:

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You might want to pay attention to how much gets taken off the top in fees. It wasn't difficult for me to get money wire transferred from...somewhere in Europe, but it would cost me $16. Cost my sister the equivalent of $27, which was why I was the better fit. But my bank told me the information required for an international transfer in a chat session.

I have no interest in Boynton or Bullock. Bullock has more of an impact on my life, but like by 1%, and me talking to her won't change that.

DTransferring from a UK account to a US account should not be hard though I admit my experience was with German and French accounts. They simply went to their bank and asked them to do a transfer, translating into dollars. There was a ding in the conversion from Euros to dollars. My bank charged a $75 fee to receive the money - which is high but they are a local bank.

Yeah, if you have a solicitor that would just as soon hold on to the money that makes life tough. It is actually part of their job to figure out how to get the money to you since they are professional in settling estates. And in this case I don't think you need a UK bank. The Solicitor has the money in some sort of account. Maybe a bank, maybe something else. But if you were in the UK they would have to get it to you. I'm pretty sure there is in fact a legal way for them to transfer the money to you. For a legal professional who has what is now your money (and who is responsible for settling the estate) to tell you it is up to you to figure out how to make the transfer is some nerve. I wonder if there is some professional association in the UK you can talk to about this? Or some regulatory body? Maybe Fiona can find out? Or someone in Ogle?

You can deposit a check in pounds, but they may take some of it as a processing fee, or whatever they call it. M had a check for £80 that he deposited into our US account, but they took something ridiculous like $20 off the top. We considered fighting them for it, since they hadn't mentioned the fee when he went to the bank to deposit it, but didn't have the energy.

If you are going to accept a check in pounds, you might check with your bank first to see what they will charge you in conversion and other fees.

Picturing my tiny local bank dealing with international currency, heh.

I do have a Cap1 account (for a variety of fundraising reasons) and they happily converted pound notes into dollars. (Tom's dad gave us cash to help with the funeral expenses while we were over there.)