Why You Should Use A Solicitor

Traditionally solicitors have always undertaken wills and estate administration work. Increasingly, banks, will writers and other internet organisations also offer wills and probate services. Many claim that they can save you hundreds of pounds compared to that of a high street solicitor. Whilst cost, is a consideration for us all, it should not be the overriding factor in deciding who you should appoint.

Getting it Right- Solicitors Qualified to Answer

1. Making sure your Will is Valid - Quite often, clients come to us when things have gone wrong. At the most crucial time, they find out that the Will that their loved ones left behind isn’t worth the paper its written on. Home-made wills; Wills written by unqualified Will Writers and internet companies often fail to take into consideration the basic formalities required to make a valid Will. Solicitors have years of legal training and experience and really are the best placed to provide advice in this field and competently.
2. Identifying your Wishes - A properly trained solicitor will not only put your wishes down on paper as you instruct, they will also identify anything that you didn’t realise was an issue. For example, you may be able to save inheritance tax through your Will. Or you may be able to set up trusts in your Will to protect vulnerable beneficiaries. Your Will needs to cater for all sorts of eventualities and you might not have thought of them all. A solicitor will have the experience and legal knowledge to help you clarify your own ideas.
3. Certainty in Will Writing - After your death, your executors will carry out the instructions contained in your Will. It is vital that those instructions are clear, otherwise the executors may not understand what you really wanted to achieve. Small differences in the wording of gifts can produce quite different results. Home made Wills and non-professionally drawn Wills are often unclear and uncertain and the consequences can be expensive to sort out and put right.
4. Challenges to a Will Post Death - A Will can be challenged after your death if there is doubt about the circumstances in which the Will was made, for example doubt about your mental capacity, or whether you made your Will under pressure from someone else. A Solicitor will try to ensure that any doubts are removed at the time the Will is made. Arguments about your Will after you have died can result in unnecessary distress, expense and bitterness.
5. Safe Storage of Wills - There are strict rules governing how a Will must be signed and witnessed to be valid. It is easy to fall foul of these if you don’t know the rules which could mean that your Will is worthless. If you have made a Will, you want to know that it is somewhere safe, confidential and can be found when it is needed. The Solicitors Regulation Authority sets out rules for solicitors keeping Wills. We have heard of Will writers who keep them in an unlocked drawer, at home and even some who don’t keep them at all. What’s more, if a Will writer goes out of business, there is a good chance that any Wills he was keeping will be lost. If a solicitors’ practice goes out of business or is taken over, the Solicitors Regulation Authority keeps track of who takes over custody of all the Wills they were keeping.
6. Estate Administration Work - With regard to estate administration work, many clients now wish to undertake this process themselves in the hope of saving money on fees. There are many reasons as to why a solicitor should be appointed to carry out this onerous task. Not only are the obligations upon an Executor burdensome but the time required to fulfil this role lengthy. As solicitors are trained in this area we can ensure that this is correctly carried out.

Solicitors – Fully Insured

Will writers and internet companies who offer wills and probate services are not regulated by any professional body unlike Solicitors. If things were to go wrong, what redress will you have? Solicitors are regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. This means that you have someone to complain to if your solicitor does make a mistake, or if you are not happy with their service. All solicitors also have to carry professional indemnity insurance, so there will be funds to compensate you for any loss you – or your estate – have suffered as a result. Because there is no governing body for Will writers or non solicitor organisations, they do not have a complaints body, nor do they have to carry insurance.

Solicitors - Independent

If you make your Will through your bank, the bank will insist that you appoint them as your executors and in return they will not charge you for drawing up the Will. Before you decide however to take that option, we suggest that you read their terms of business and then try and understand the basis upon which they will charge. Not only are the terms of appointment expensive (almost three times as much as a solicitor), the work is simply outsourced to a third party whilst the bank retains a large percentage of the fees that they are charging you. So, as a third party undertaking this work, they are inevitably dependant upon the referral received by the bank – how independent can they really be and are they acting in your best interest? The same basic rule applies to companies who make referrals to independent practices. A word of caution here, referral companies are becoming increasing more common and claim to vet their panel of solicitors to ensure the quality of their service. On referral, the company will charge the solicitor a fee for that referral. With a reduction in profit as a result to the solicitor, how good a service do you think you will get? More importantly however, solicitors do not need to be vetted, that is a role already undertaken by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

Solicitors - Cost Effective

Solicitors' charges vary from one firm to the other but they are not contrary to popular belief disproportionate to their level of experience, legal knowledge, training and taking into account the costs of complying with their regulatory requirements. All of this is done with the client in mind. That is, to provide a good quality of advice and ultimately to the protection of our client. If the Will Writer or unregulated probate company were to go bust, or ran off with the money which they have collected for the estate what legal redress do you have? In the hope of saving a few hundreds of pounds off your solicitor’s bill you could end up losing thousands- the choice is yours.