to think that £600+VAT is expensive for wills?

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This is what DH & I have been quoted for our wills. Not simple wills as such, as will need trust(s) and DSC involved. Does this sound expensive, or about right?

We were charged £275 inc VAT for 2 wills

are your Wills v v v complicated (apart from the Trusts)?

It's ridiculously expensive. Get the will writing kit from WHS Smith and get it notarised. Surely it would be cheaper to get a solicitor to add codiciles for the complicated parts.

I had mine done by a firm and it cost £250. They didn't have will writing kits back then.

Not if trusts are involved and there are two of you. I think its about right.

Just ring around a few firms though - you'll soon find out

you can't really DIY a will that involves a trust etc with a WHSmith kit.
We had the same - quite complicated as it involved several trusts (due to dd2 having a disability, not because we're loaded!) and it cost £550 including VAT, but that was at a special Mencap rate.

it's about the same as we paid 6 yrs ago

rubyslippers - hard to say what is complicated compared to other people, but i guess more complicated due to DSC and fact that we will have DC of our own soon

(and I didn't really think it was overpriced - the solicitor spent 2 hours with us and obviously drew the whole thing up etc.)

hmm - we had two mirror wills and Trust stuff for DS and i thought £275 was quite a lot

not sure how much more complicated DSC would make things i'm afraid

i would still shop around if i were you

also not sure our's would be mirror wills - i have more assets and would distribute my assets differently to how DH would

ah - yours is starting to sound less starightforward than ours

I think ours were about £700 and they took ages and ages to draw up, so it ended up being value (ish) for money I thought. We had lots of trusts and complexities, so I think it would be spot on tbh.

We did ours through Will-aid. Solicitors offer their services for a donation to charity.

Sounds about right, I think that's about what the Private Client Department charge in my firm. Don't use a will form from WHSmiths - serious false economy.

Gasp! Sounds like an awful lot of money unless they were very complicated.

We recently had ours done by a local solicitor and it cost £180!

My step dad has just paid around £1500 to get his will changed to ensure that everything goes to his two daughters. Us six step children get nothing and Mum gets to stay in the house til she dies and a small sum of money (if she doesn't die first obviously.)

I'm sure he would have paid more if that's what it took

That sounds accurate and slightly less than what we paid. If you have an estate worth more than £300k - which if you own a house is the UK these days means you do - then you should definitely pay the extra money and get them done properly with a trust set up. It might seem like a lot now, but if you died tomorrow, your children would be left a lot less.

I think it's one of those things that sucks having to pay, but once you've done it you can tick it off your list and not think about it again (unless of course something dramatically changes in your life)

We paid about £199 for mirror wills. You can do them online with Tesco for £25.00

sounds about right tbh if there are trusts involved. our wills cost about the same but that also included the power of attorney stuff as well as trusts. i think it also varies depending on who you see in the solicitor's firm (eg partners, associates, notaries etc etc)

DH, a solicitor who specialises in this kind of work, thinks this quite reasonable if it includes trust provisions and addresses other complications such as step relationships and possible inheritance tax mitigation on second death. Do not touch a homemade Will kit - litigation very common on these