Society of Will Writers supports the licensing of will writers
The Society of Will Writers thanks the Legal Services Consumer Panel for taking the bold step to carry out their own investigations rather than continuing to rely on the anecdotal evidence that has been regularly provided by various parties in the past in an attempt to discredit professional will writers.
Although will writing has been around for over 20 years, it is only in very recent years that we have seen a rise in the numbers of will writing companies, in particular, that work outside of any regulatory regime, and as a consequence have succeeded in bringing the profession into disrepute through their poor practices.
Every action taken and initiative supported by the Society recognises the importance of ensuring that the consumers’ interests lie at the heart of all we do. We believe that now could be the right time to introduce a system of regulation that will ensure that any person or company that provides wills and other testamentary documents in exchange for a fee are properly licensed to practice.
The Society supports the introduction of the licensing of professional will writers in Scotland and looks forward to working with the Scottish Executive in the future in bringing their plans to fruition.
Furthermore the Society believes that such a system can also work in England and Wales, and need not necessarily be prohibitive on cost resulting in even fewer people being put off from making a will. We also believe that such a system, if adopted could be introduced very quickly and cheaply with the profession bearing the bulk of the cost.
The Society of Will Writers already has in place the infrastructure needed to support such a scheme including well established training and legal support systems, a Code of Practice which its members are required to adhere to and which has been drafted in consultation with the OFT, the CAB, LACORS and Age Concern (now part of Age UK) and is currently before the OFT for stage one approval under their CCAS scheme.
