Advertising Wills?

[Coldhands]

I had a phone call today asking if I had made a will. I haven't and it is something that me and DH have talked about a lot recently and we know we have to get it done.

This company said they were having a special offer on and they can come to the house and draw it up. Then it goes to their head office and we get it back to witness and sign etc.

It is very cheap and I have made an appointment (they also phone a day before confirming so I can cancel if I need to) but has anyone else every heard of this? I just don't want to be letting some random person who could be checking out what we have to come back later (I am a very paranoid person).

It is probably me being totally irrational and I am off to check their website in a minute, I'm sure they are just looking for extra business in struggling times, but I was just wondering.

Yes, had lots of cold callers offering wills; I did respond to one of these a few years ago but the will was never finalised. I'd prefer to use a solicitor who fully understands the financial implications and would be around to advise the executors if nec. Having said that if your will is straightforward then no harm using a will writing service.

Do double check the executors - there have been articles in the press recently about companies (banks etc) who offer cheap will writing and at the same time offer their services as executors and charge a large fee for doing that.

They said that they don't appoint thereselves executors, we can choose who we want. They also said they don't charge a percentage of our estate when we die.

Its basically who gets custody of DS and what happens to our life insurances. Does this sound like a straight forward will? We only have a 30% share of our house and a very small life insurance that covers the mortgage part of our house, we rent the other 70%.

It does sound like a straightforward will, and I do agree you need it done, but actually, for the life insurances, depending on how they were set up they may already fall outside your estate. It is not uncommon, when life insurance is taken out, for them to be held 'in trust' with a letter of wishes given to the insurers to tell them who to pay out to, rather than deal with them in the will. So you should check this out before automatically putting them in your will.

Thanks Clean will look into that.

mumblechum1 has an ad over here:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/small_business_ads

She provides an excellent and reliable service and comes highly recommended by many mumsnetters. Zombie would far rather use someone with personal recommendations rather than a cold calling company.

I'd also recommend Mumblechum who is a qualified lawyer and wills writer with many years of experience. As it stands at the moment, a lot of these so called 'wills writer's are not qualified and not regulated although I understand that changes are coming in at some point with regards to this.

Mumblechum's company charges less than half the price that a High Street firm of solicitors would charge as she doesn't have the overheads.

Thanks Zombie and MOS you lovely people!!

rather!

Mumblechum did ours too

And ours as well would recommend mumblechum 1 very efficient.

Mowbray

What lovely clients I have!

How did you get on, OP?

Good grief, just realised this thread is from April 2012 [shame]

April 2010