Will writer or solicitor?

Aviendha

I've read the MSE page on cheap and free wills, but I'm still not sure whether it's better to go with a will-writing service or a solicitor. My spouse and I are just looking for mirror wills and we have no children so it's not a complicated situation. I'm leaning towards using something like Which, but I'm concerned about the "less protection if something goes wrong" with will-writing services. Would it be ok to use this for a simple situation like ours? I can't really think of what could go wrong but I don't know much about these things. 

Marcon

Aviendha said:

I've read the MSE page on cheap and free wills, but I'm still not sure whether it's better to go with a will-writing service or a solicitor. My spouse and I are just looking for mirror wills and we have no children so it's not a complicated situation. I'm leaning towards using something like Which, but I'm concerned about the "less protection if something goes wrong" with will-writing services. Would it be ok to use this for a simple situation like ours? I can't really think of what could go wrong but I don't know much about these things. 

The snag is that if something does 'go wrong', it'll almost certainly be too late to do anything about it when that becomes apparent.

There are some excellent will writers and some not very good solicitors, so it isn't invariably a black and white answer. Check carefully to see what protections you have if you use a will writer (they aren't regulated by the Law Society, so at the very least you need to ensure they hold proper professional indemnity cover).

boingy

Prompted by a recent bereavement we've recently started looking at getting mirror wills written. There is definitely too much choice and, as Marcon says, I'm not sure how much use "protection" would be, especially if there is a problem after the second one of us goes. We're tending toward the Coop as a middle ground between will writers and solicitors. They reckon £245 for two straightforward Mirror Wills and I think I've seen a referral link on this site that reduces the cost to £195, assuming it still works.

One of our problems is naming executors. We have no kids and our siblings are not really up to the job. We don't want to burden friends with the task so we're probably going to have to go with the Co-op or a solicitor, neither of which is cheap, but perhaps that's a topic for a different thread.