Interim results from a survey published today by the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners (STEP), reveal the scale of the threat posed to the consumer from cowboys in the will writing market. The survey found that 75% of STEP members have encountered cases of “incompetence or dishonesty in the will writing market in the last 12 months” and prompted STEP to again call for better consumer protection.
Two thirds of respondents reported coming across hidden fees which were not outlined in the stated price for a will, and 63% had direct experience of cases where will writing companies had gone out of business and disappeared with their clients’ wills. Just over one third had encountered cases where incompetence had led to significant additional tax bills.
Chief Executive David Harvey said: “This research shows how widespread cowboy will writers have become and it is clear those who charge a fee for writing a will should now be regulated. They must have an appropriate qualification, and they must have proper indemnity insurance. Soon the consumer will be protected by new regulation in Scotland and this benefit needs to be extended to cover the rest of the UK."
Examples of malpractice included a company which approached young mothers in shopping malls, telling them their children would be taken into care after they died if they failed to make a will. One consumer was charged £12,000 up-front for executor services only for their family to find the firm involved had gone out of business not long after, disappearing with their wills and money.
In June the Legal Services Board launched a review of the threat posed to consumers in England & Wales by unprofessional will writers and is currently seeking evidence of consumer harm. The Scottish Parliament is currently going through the process of regulating non-lawyer will writers through the Legal Services (Scotland) Bill.
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Tuesday, August 10
STEP calls for cowboy will-writers to be ridden out of town
by
Charles Christian
on Tue 10 Aug 2010 12:00 BST
Blandy & Blandy roll out Pilgrim DMS
by
Charles Christian
on Tue 10 Aug 2010 09:57 BST
Thames Valley law firm Blandy & Blandy, which swapped out Axxia Arista in favour of the Pilgrim LawSoft PMS in late 2006, has now rolled out Pilgrim Client Matter Inception workflows, Probate case management and an ambitious complete installation of LawSoft’s integrated Document Management & Assembly System.
Nick Burrows, Blandy & Blandy joint managing partner said “We were keen to exploit the efficiency and risk management gains afforded by the LawSoft Document Management and Assembly module. Our objective was to have all documents created and saved within LawSoft so that we could ensure consistency of content and presentation, which is difficult to achieve without a tool such as this. This, supplemented by our own in-house development skills, has allowed us to come up with an extremely powerful, flexible and easy to use document management and production solution which, I’m pleased to say, has more than matched our initial vision.” Applications Manager, DBA & In House Trainer Raheela Fernandes added “The LawSoft document assembly and workflow tools, along with my existing Visual Basic skills, have enabled me to build a system that now means close to 100% of the firm’s documents are created from LawSoft Quick Launch or from a LawSoft workflow. This method of document production has allowed for greater uniformity and consistency across the firm as well as better control over document creation. The accuracy and efficiency gains have been tremendous.” |
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