Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Cowboy will writers in the UK: Save now and pay later?
In the UK there is apparently a will-writing industry, with non-lawyers in the business of writing wills for people. Usually the customers who use these businesses do so because they are trying to save money, as these businesses are cheaper than lawyers. Apparently there is a reason why they are cheaper, and this article from Diane A. Vieria explains how customers are running into serious problems. We don't have independent will-writers here, but this article really does show how dangerous they can be.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
You might also like
After reading this article it is interesting to see that you do not have the unregulated world of Will Writers in Canada but you still experience the issues of poorly written wills.
ReplyDeleteYes Alexandra we certainly do. Sometimes it happens because people draft their own Wills. Sometimes - in fact quite often - it's because people cheap out on the cost of a will and get a non-lawyer to draft one. For example, they ask legal secretaries, financial advisors and accountants, none of whom have been trained in the law of Wills. And some of the blame falls on us lawyers, I'm sorry to say. A lawyer should know his or her own limitations but some seem not to realize that a Will is more than a fill-in-the-blank document. And it's the client whose estate is in a mess who ends up paying for that. Every time I give a seminar I urge people to use a specialist and not a dabbler.
ReplyDelete