Advice re: wills & executors please.

Those £39 Wills certainly came with a sting in the tail.

Charging an extra £30 for additional clauses which should form part of the cost of a Will is a common wheeze for cowboy willwriters.

Another is the 'probate' services. Usually cowboys like this are content at appointing themselves as your executors, but charging £1000 upfront for that dubious pleasure is adding insult to injury.

Unfortunately the law still allows anybody with no training or qualifications to call themselves a willwriter.

Sloughflint is right, cancel the cheque and walk away now as the Will is probably useless.

Visit www.ipw.org.uk to find willwriters in your area that operate to a code of conduct that has gained stage 1 approval from the Office of Fair Trading.

There is a High Court order preventing SPS from administering estates and requiring SPS to hand over all wills in which it has been named as executor to the Solicitors Regulatory Authority.

It is thought there are some 10,000 wills involved!!!

The court order prevents the firm naming themselves as executors in future Wills. The solicitor involved (who founded the company) claims to have resigned.

However, the firm is still trading as an unregulated Willwriting firm, is still marketing its probate service, in breach of the High Court order - and its literature still bears the name of the solicitor who claims to have resigned.

B

http://www.sundaymercury.net/news/midlands-news/2008/08/17/10-000-wills-frozen-in-midlands-solicitors-probe-66331-21549253/

vio wrote:

looks like cancel the cheque

It's a bit late for that now if the OP hasn't already done so - though hopefully he took my advice 2 months ago.

It really is about time that this murky world of Willwriting is properly regulated. The standard advice by many contributors on this forum is "Get your Will drawn up by a solicitor". It's worth reminding ourselves that it was a solicitor behind this disreputable firm.

Another little known fact is that there are no compulsory exams for solicitors in Willwriting or probate.

It's clear just by reading a few threads on this forum, that this whole area of Wills and probate needs cleaning up. For an interesting example of some malpractice involving probate, have a look at this thread: http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1120993&highlight=wills

Compulsory exams, training and regulation is something the IPW has been calling for for years (and its own members submit themselves to as a matter of course), yet the government whilst recognising there are problems, feel that driving the unregulated firms out of business would reduce consumer choice.

Every single person (other than unregulated willwriters and solicitors) I speak to agree that this would be a good thing.

The IPW has had a Code of Conduct for the protection of the public that has existed for many years, and has received stage 1 approval from the Office of fair Trading; but it is not compulsory for any willwriting professionals to submit themselves to the IPW's rigorous standards - in fact less than a quarter decide to join up.

Some solicitors some of which have been writing wills for many years, are attracted by the very low insurance premiums that IPW members benefit from and undertake the entrance exam - some of them fail.

Who are happy to make a lot of money from badly written Wills written by so-called professionals - mistakes that the consumer is unlikely to spot themselves? - Solicitors of course.

This is not an anti-solicitor rant, it's just the way things are in this country.

Anybody else concerned?

That name rings a bell. I summarised some findings from old threads in one thread a while back. I'll go and locate.

Yes, I thought I recognised the name. It was mentioned in this thread by someone who worked in the business ( may still do).( post 42)

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?p=18544201

People interested in this ought to read the above thread. Truly shocking stuff.