Seeking Bodies with whom to do "Due Diligence" regarding "Drafters of Wills!

SydSnott

Not quite in "God's Waiting Room" but one of my cousins (nearest relations) has offered to be my Executor.
She is well acquainted with the procedure and is a retired Chartered Accountant herself.
To this end she has been badgering me for both our sakes, to draw up a will.
Her latest attempt is to put me in touch with a friend of a friend of her sisters another cousin of mine!
I have made initial contact, and in order to satisfy myself that he is genuine without appearing ungrateful or offensive, I gave him an outline of the property and investments involved and my intended manner of distribution, suggesting I could come to his place to discuss the detail.
This would give me a chance to assess him and at least know his address.
His response was to suggest we meet somewhere for a coffee and that I bring details of the contact names and addresses for the various investment banks and companies involved.
This doesn't help me find out anything about him.
Without appearing to "look a gift horse in the mouth", are there any official bodies where I could "look him up"?
All I have is his name, email address and mobile number and my cousin's assurance that he is semi retired and offers these services as a kindness to known individuals, the presumption is that he is a paralegal of some sort.
I don't want to be seen as distrustful, but these days one has to be so careful.
Any help would be appreciated.   

Keep_pedalling

Unless he is a solicitor you should not be using him.

Savvy_Sue

And if he is still practising as a solicitor, he should be on the SRA's 'little list'. https://www.sra.org.uk/consumers/register/

If your affairs are complicated, then you could say that you feel you should consult a STEP registered professional. You can see if this chap is one of them at https://www.step.org/directory/members

bobster2

SydSnott said:

Not quite in "God's Waiting Room" but one of my cousins (nearest relations) has offered to be my Executor.
She is well acquainted with the procedure and is a retired Chartered Accountant herself.
To this end she has been badgering me for both our sakes, to draw up a will.
Her latest attempt is to put me in touch with a friend of a friend of her sisters another cousin of mine!
I have made initial contact, and in order to satisfy myself that he is genuine without appearing ungrateful or offensive, I gave him an outline of the property and investments involved and my intended manner of distribution, suggesting I could come to his place to discuss the detail.
This would give me a chance to assess him and at least know his address.
His response was to suggest we meet somewhere for a coffee and that I bring details of the contact names and addresses for the various investment banks and companies involved.

This sounds dodgy and I think you have reason to be distrustful.

I cannot think of a good reason why a competent qualified person drafting a will would need these contact names and addresses. This could suggest incompetence - meaning you'll end up with a badly worded will with bequests that fail (e.g. because it uses very specific names to assets which may change).

I would recommend you find and use your own STEP qualified solicitor.

Devongardener

Politely decline and say you are going to use a local solicitor.  This has so many red flags, a friend of a friend of a cousin who wants details of where your savings are invested, avoid!

RAS

Your current investments may or may not be relevant when you die, transferred to better deals, used to cover care costs, spent on a world cruise? Apart from a rough idea of value, there's no need for the information.

If you are a single person, you really could do with using a STEP solicitor because you need to think about what happens to your assets if cousin Mary dies before you. 

And if your cousin is of a similar age, I'd consider choosing someone younger as executors.

Meantime, have you got you LPAs sorted? You can DIY them.

GrahamLM52

bobster2 said:

SydSnott said:

Not quite in "God's Waiting Room" but one of my cousins (nearest relations) has offered to be my Executor.
She is well acquainted with the procedure and is a retired Chartered Accountant herself.
To this end she has been badgering me for both our sakes, to draw up a will.
Her latest attempt is to put me in touch with a friend of a friend of her sisters another cousin of mine!
I have made initial contact, and in order to satisfy myself that he is genuine without appearing ungrateful or offensive, I gave him an outline of the property and investments involved and my intended manner of distribution, suggesting I could come to his place to discuss the detail.
This would give me a chance to assess him and at least know his address.
His response was to suggest we meet somewhere for a coffee and that I bring details of the contact names and addresses for the various investment banks and companies involved.

This sounds dodgy and I think you have reason to be distrustful.

I cannot think of a good reason why a competent qualified person drafting a will would need these contact names and addresses. This could suggest incompetence - meaning you'll end up with a badly worded will with bequests that fail (e.g. because it uses very specific names to assets which may change).

I would recommend you find and use your own STEP qualified solicitor.

The solicitor who drafted our wills emailed a spreadsheet for us to complete, detailing all our bank account details, investments, savings, account numbers, contact details and approximate balances. Everything except our passwords. Log-in details of on-line social media accounts were required. The registration numbers and make of our cars were to be on the spreadsheet and also any "valuables" such as jewellery were to be listed and valued.

She suggested that we review the spreadsheet annually and we were to email her a new one if there were any changes. This, she said, was to make things easier for the executor in the event we both passed away at the same time.

The example she gave was that our house catches fire, we both die and all our documents are destroyed. How would an executor know which organisations to contact?

We were uncomfortable sending her the spreadsheet (email is not a secure method of communication). Eventually we decided against sending it at all.

thegreenone

GrahamLM52 said:

bobster2 said:

SydSnott said:

Not quite in "God's Waiting Room" but one of my cousins (nearest relations) has offered to be my Executor.
She is well acquainted with the procedure and is a retired Chartered Accountant herself.
To this end she has been badgering me for both our sakes, to draw up a will.
Her latest attempt is to put me in touch with a friend of a friend of her sisters another cousin of mine!
I have made initial contact, and in order to satisfy myself that he is genuine without appearing ungrateful or offensive, I gave him an outline of the property and investments involved and my intended manner of distribution, suggesting I could come to his place to discuss the detail.
This would give me a chance to assess him and at least know his address.
His response was to suggest we meet somewhere for a coffee and that I bring details of the contact names and addresses for the various investment banks and companies involved.

This sounds dodgy and I think you have reason to be distrustful.

I cannot think of a good reason why a competent qualified person drafting a will would need these contact names and addresses. This could suggest incompetence - meaning you'll end up with a badly worded will with bequests that fail (e.g. because it uses very specific names to assets which may change).

I would recommend you find and use your own STEP qualified solicitor.

She suggested that we review the spreadsheet annually and we were to email her a new one if there were any changes. This, she said, was to make things easier for the executor in the event we both passed away at the same time.

We have a battered ring binder in our desk cupboard which contains all the details you state your solicitor wants and we update it whenever thing changes.  It then gets uploaded to Dropbox.  We do need to buy a fire proof box to put it in but both our sons know where it is.  You can do this easily yourselves.

GrahamLM52

thegreenone said:

GrahamLM52 said:

bobster2 said:

SydSnott said:

Not quite in "God's Waiting Room" but one of my cousins (nearest relations) has offered to be my Executor.
She is well acquainted with the procedure and is a retired Chartered Accountant herself.
To this end she has been badgering me for both our sakes, to draw up a will.
Her latest attempt is to put me in touch with a friend of a friend of her sisters another cousin of mine!
I have made initial contact, and in order to satisfy myself that he is genuine without appearing ungrateful or offensive, I gave him an outline of the property and investments involved and my intended manner of distribution, suggesting I could come to his place to discuss the detail.
This would give me a chance to assess him and at least know his address.
His response was to suggest we meet somewhere for a coffee and that I bring details of the contact names and addresses for the various investment banks and companies involved.

This sounds dodgy and I think you have reason to be distrustful.

I cannot think of a good reason why a competent qualified person drafting a will would need these contact names and addresses. This could suggest incompetence - meaning you'll end up with a badly worded will with bequests that fail (e.g. because it uses very specific names to assets which may change).

I would recommend you find and use your own STEP qualified solicitor.

She suggested that we review the spreadsheet annually and we were to email her a new one if there were any changes. This, she said, was to make things easier for the executor in the event we both passed away at the same time.

We have a battered ring binder in our desk cupboard which contains all the details you state your solicitor wants and we update it whenever thing changes.  It then gets uploaded to Dropbox.  We do need to buy a fire proof box to put it in but both our sons know where it is.  You can do this easily yourselves.

Yes, that's what we did in the end. The point I was trying to make when bobster2 said "I cannot think of a good reason why a competent qualified person drafting a will would need these contact names and addresses." was that our solicitor wanted contact names and addresses AND the amount of money held in each account.

bobster2

GrahamLM52 said:

thegreenone said:

We have a battered ring binder in our desk cupboard which contains all the details you state your solicitor wants and we update it whenever thing changes.  It then gets uploaded to Dropbox.  We do need to buy a fire proof box to put it in but both our sons know where it is.  You can do this easily yourselves.

Yes, that's what we did in the end. The point I was trying to make when bobster2 said "I cannot think of a good reason why a competent qualified person drafting a will would need these contact names and addresses." was that our solicitor wanted contact names and addresses AND the amount of money held in each account.

Of course I can see the value of this for an executor. But I still cannot see the relevance to the person drafting the will - at the will drafting stage. All they need is a rough idea of the nature and value of any assets.

Even as an executor - all you really need to know is which organisations someone has accounts with. Not all the individual account numbers - which change often over the years now as people frequently open and change ISAs, fixed term bonds etc. Once you inform a bank that you are the personal representative for someone - and they accept this - they will provide a list of all accounts and balances. 

I've been through this twice as an executor. Knowing the account numbers and balances prior to getting the information from the banks didn't really help much.

Marcon

SydSnott said:

Not quite in "God's Waiting Room" but one of my cousins (nearest relations) has offered to be my Executor.
She is well acquainted with the procedure and is a retired Chartered Accountant herself.
To this end she has been badgering me for both our sakes, to draw up a will.
Her latest attempt is to put me in touch with a friend of a friend of her sisters another cousin of mine!
I have made initial contact, and in order to satisfy myself that he is genuine without appearing ungrateful or offensive, I gave him an outline of the property and investments involved and my intended manner of distribution, suggesting I could come to his place to discuss the detail.
This would give me a chance to assess him and at least know his address.
His response was to suggest we meet somewhere for a coffee and that I bring details of the contact names and addresses for the various investment banks and companies involved.
This doesn't help me find out anything about him.
Without appearing to "look a gift horse in the mouth", are there any official bodies where I could "look him up"?
All I have is his name, email address and mobile number and my cousin's assurance that he is semi retired and offers these services as a kindness to known individuals, the presumption is that he is a paralegal of some sort.
I don't want to be seen as distrustful, but these days one has to be so careful.
Any help would be appreciated.   

A thread title including 'bodies' and 'wills' - such a disappointment when I read on!!

Your cousin may be well meaning (and I'm sure she is), but she does sound a bit overbearing. This man could be absolutely genuine, but if he is offering these services as a 'kindness' he probably isn't insured to do so - and that alone would make me cross him off my list of possible advisers.

Any chance you could move matters on by telling her the truth: you'd prefer to use your own choice of local solicitor to draft the will?