Story of the lost Will - located 25-years later

Victoria Jones, Director of the Probate and Wills department at Lawson-West Solicitors explains how a Certainty Will Search notification led to Lawson West winning the probate work from a Will our firm had written twenty-five years earlier.
 
Victoria Jones, Director, Lawson West Solicitors comments:

"We first received notification that a client of ours had passed away when we were sent a Will Search notification from Certainty - the National Will Register. After searching our archived Wills, we were able to confirm that we held the missing Will from November 1995, which appointed the Partners of the firm as the Executors of the estate.”
 
“We quickly got in contact with the individual that was searching for the Will to firstly ask for identification to check that they were entitled to view the Will.”

 
“The individual searching for the Will was the daughter of the deceased. She explained that the family could not find a copy of a Will in her mother’s paperwork and they were unsure whether a Will existed at all which led her to conduct a Will Search with Certainty. She was so relieved that they had been able to locate her mother’s Will.”

Vicky Jones adds:

“The Will gave a specific gift to her grandchildren which would have not of occurred under the Intestacy Rules. Without receiving the Certainty Will Search notification, we would have not have known that our client had died and would have lost the probate work as the family may have instructed other solicitors on the assumption that the deceased had died intestate.”

A Will Search at Certainty costs £38.00 +VAT.

• As an Executor or Administrator you have the legal authority, responsibility and duty to distribute the deceased’s estate correctly and could be held financially responsible for any mistakes made through any breach of duty.
  
  
• To help avoid issues arising later in the process of distributing an estate during probate, it is important to identify whether a Will exists and who holds the most up-to-date version before any work is undertaken.
  
  
• To help confirm the existence of a Will or prove the Will you hold, the Law Society recommend using Certainty the National Will Register to search nationally for registered and unregistered Wills. At Lawson-West we can help you with this process.

There are many reasons why a person might need to search for a Will using the Certainty Will Register (a full list of reasons and the application form can be found here), these include:

• Checking there is no unknown Will

• A belief there is a Will but cannot locate it

• A belief there is a later Will than the one being used to distribute the estate

For further information on the types of searches you can carry out please contact vjones@lawson-west.co.uk, or visit the Certainty website for more information here.

Lawson West Solicitors has been a member of Certainty since 2016 - Certainty is the name for the UK's National Will Register.

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