Very unsure of a Financial Service (including Probate) I've been offered

angelinamay

Morning
Four years ago I used a Will writing service to plan and write up my will.  I received a call from the same company 2 weeks back, asking whether they could visit me to discuss changes in Government legislation regarding PoA, LPoA, ring-fencing my property AND half of the marital home (I no longer live there) so that should I require a Care home in the future, the Government will not be able to touch my property, and that it could be passed to my children as is stated in my Will. The cost of this would be £2630.  He also said that ALL wills go through the Probate system (do they??) and how very difficult they would be to set up, how EXPENSIVE it could get etc etc.  He also mentioned setting up trustees, which would  cost £90 p/a.

Now, call me suspicious, but I don't like the BIG SELL which seemed to me, to be what he was doing.  He came along last Friday, and I refused to sign anything, which although very pleasant, he clearly wasn't happy with.  When he was here, he showed me a very convincing PowerPoint presentation with lots of figures in red... I said I WOULD need to think about it over the weekend, which I have done.  He said how important it is to get this in place asap when I said I'd probably wait until after Christmas - I was tempted to say 'What you want lad, is your Christmas bonus' !!

HOWEVER!  I'm no clearer whether I want to go this route - He's due back tomorrow evening (my partner will be here this time).  

Has anyone here 'suffered' the same thing? 

I don't plan on popping off just yet either!!

Thanks for reading,

Angelina

BooJewels

It sounds to me that you're right to be suspicious. 

Not all wills need go through Probate - only if a financial institution require it to release funds - and they need to be quite large funds, as most banks have limits and these can be in the 30-50k area.  You'd need it to sell a house.  Even if you do, unless the estate is especially complicated, the forms are simple enough and there's a fee to pay for it, which in our case was something like £224, which included several extra copies of the Grant.  I've executed 3 wills recently and only applied for Probate for one of them.

I have LPAs in place for elderly family members and am not aware of any changes in legislation about them - they've extended the service to include some digital aspects for more recent ones, but that's the only change I've heard about.  Again, you can do it yourself and the fee is I think £82 for each one - there are 2 types - so a maximum cost of £164 - and you can get a reduction if you're on certain benefits.

Others might be able to comment more about trusts etc.  And I'd certainly be very cautious about any scheme to save care costs, deprivation of assets is not taken lightly.

angelinamay

Thank you BooJewels, for reply. 

Yes, I had a brief look on the Gov.org website and it seemed straight forward as far as I could see, this company charges £325 for each part of PoA.  I'm about to email the guy and ask him to email me the PPoint presentation so that I can view it before he turns up tomorrow... wonder what the answer will be :-)   ?

Malthusian

He came along last Friday, and I refused to sign anything, which although very pleasant, he clearly wasn't happy with.

This is a screaming red flag. Only scammers put people under pressure to sign quickly when considering any kind of financial or legal arrangement.

Cancel the appointment, block his number, and see an SRA-registered solicitor to get your Wills done properly.

Clever-clever arrangements that attempt to make the Government pay your costs of living while keeping your money rarely work as intended. Google "Universal Wealth Preservation Trust".

angelinamay

Thanks Malthusian for reply.  As I said, they compiled my Will 4 years ago, but I have that, they don't store a copy, although I bet they have a copy electronically, 

Linton

Just cancel the appointment, it's a waste of your time.  If you want proper advice I suggest you go to someone qualified to give it such as a solicitor rather than a salesman with a vested interest.

All wills dont go through the probate system, many don't. 

The Government doesnt take your money if you go into care.  Rather the local authority will refuse to pay for your care if you have the money to pay for it yourself - much like many other benefits.

angelinamay

Thanks Linton.  Strangely, he had a lot to say about Solicitors - how they WASN'T expert in this particular field, they was overpaid (I'm wondering whether he's a FAILED lawyer?)    and why it's important to use his company.  Oh that's another thing!  The Will was advertised for £99 4 years ago - the end result cost £251... it's 3 pages long...

Malthusian

angelinamay said:

Thanks Malthusian for reply.  As I said, they compiled my Will 4 years ago, but I have that, they don't store a copy, although I bet they have a copy electronically, 

You should see an SRA-registered solicitor to make new Wills rather than rely on one compiled by an unregulated charlatan.

If you'd just found out that the guy you paid a few hundred quid to do the electrics in your house was actually a fraud, you would pay a professional to come in and check his work, not wait and see if you got electrocuted.

They may have managed to do the job (especially if it's a simple one), but better to spend a small amount of money to check rather than land your heirs with a huge bill down the line.

Just to gild the lily on why he's talking rubbish, even if he did have a clever scheme which would force the Government to pay you benefits as if you had no money while keeping all your money, it makes absolutely no sense to say you need to put it in place urgently. If you were hit on the head by a falling piano tomorrow and went into care immediately, and your attorneys claimed you had no money because you'd just given any assessable funds into a trust, the scheme would almost certainly fail because it would be obvious deliberate deprivation.

The only chance any such scheme has of working is if you stay out of care for long enough for your attorneys to be able to argue that it had nothing to do with trying to make the taxpayer pay care costs.

It is not like Wills where if you go under the proverbial bus tomorow, doing a Will today makes a huge difference. In the case of eligibility for government benefits for care costs, if the proverbial bus hits you tomorrow and scrambles your marbles, nothing you do today is going to make a difference.

(Having Lasting Powers of Attorney in place would however make a big difference for whoever looks after your affairs.)

angelinamay

Thanks Malthusian, the company in question, is actually quite well known (I won't mention them here though) so they might be doing SOME good for SOME people!!

angelinamay

Thank GOODNESS for the Internet!!  

Just found, this guy was manager of a Supermarket. 
He joined this Wills n Legal services company 6 weeks ago TODAY.  Job title:  Senior Trust and Estate Planning Consultant.

IS THIS POSSIBLE???   He's about 30.

Malthusian

Why wouldn't it be? "Senior Trust and Estate Planning Consultant" is not a protected term (like "solicitor" or "doctor"). My 2 year old son can call himself a Senior Trust and Estate Planning Consultant if he wants.

This is part of the problem with using unregulated randoms for legal advice instead of proper solicitors.

It is perfectly possible that they have gulled quite a few people into paying thousands of pounds for some legal documents that, if they are lucky, will achieve nothing. If they are unlucky they might have to spend thousands of pounds, or worse, to unwind the arrangements. As for actually helping anyone, I doubt it. They might have set up a few valid Wills or LPOAs that actually work as intended but based on their extremely dodgy behaviour elsewhere, that would count as a happy accident rather than design.