Who regulates written wills?
I am often asked about the Regulation of Wills and Will Writing and there’s quite a lot of inaccurate information out there so I’ve written this recently to a client and thought it worth passing on to my wider client base:
The SRA (Solicitors Regulatory Authority) do not regulate Wills, they regulate Solicitors.
Solicitors carry out many elements of legal work, one of them being will writing, however, will writing isn’t a restricted practice, you can write your own and anyone else’s, I am a Professional Will Writer and a Full Member of the Society of Will Writers with £2.5million Professional Indemnity Insurance against every will that I write. My business is not regulated but I adhere to the Society of Will Writers Code of Practice and have been doing so for more than 17 years, I have over 12,500 clients worldwide.
The Legal Ombudsman commissioned an inquiry into whether Will Writing should be a restricted practice a few years ago and decided that there are as many poor quality Will Writers who are Solicitors as those who are not Solicitors and so has not approved the Regulation of Wills.
My wills are fully legal and have been used thousands of times to obtain grants of Probate which have never failed due to the quality of the will wording and they have been challenged many times as well by disgruntled potential beneficiaries and I have not lost one case yet.
Wills sometimes fail to obtain a Grant of Probate for many other reasons, often to do with the quality of the Attestation, or signature process, but if the instructions that are sent with my wills are followed correctly there will be no problem in that arena.
During the Covid-19 restrictions it has been necessary to add to those will signing instructions and some of those elements may remain after Covid restrictions have been lifted but followed carefully all will be well.
