Silks Solicitors have been members of Certainty the National Will Register [1] for over six years and they regularly register their clients’ Wills with The National Will Register and incorporate Certainty Will Search into their internal process.
In this case, Silks Solicitors were acting as a Professional Executor of an estate but as a safeguard measure conducted a Certainty Will Search to ensure that they were in possession of the last Will that the decease had written.
Yvonne Nordass, Silks Solicitors comments: “In this particular case, a friend of the deceased was aware of a November 2019 Will that the deceased had made with Silks Solicitors. The Will appointed both the friend and the Directors of the firm as the executors of the estate.”
In this case a previous Will was found and didn’t affect the way the estate was to be distributed but on a daily basis Certainty Will Searches locate Wills that revoke the Will presented to the instructed solicitor for probate. Carrying out a Certainty Will Search, that can be claimed against the estate, provides the solicitor with a Will Search Report that can be placed on file, demonstrating that measures were taken to understand if an unknown Will existed and therefore mitigates risk of claims against the estate.
“The firm always conduct a Certainty Will Search when we are appointed as a Professional Executor to ensure that we are in possession of the last Will before applying for a Grant of Probate.”
Yvonne conducted a Will Search Combined that searches for Wills that have been registered in The National Will Register system (circa 8.7 million Wills) and for Wills that have not been registered. A registered Will was located in less than 24 hours with another member firm.
Yvonne continues: “The Will search found an earlier Will that was held at another law firm. We were then able to proceed with applying for a Grant of Probate with the confidence that we were in possession of the last Will of the Deceased.”
“Although the Will was less than a year old when the deceased passed away, it is not worth the risk to proceed with the estate administration process on the assumption that you hold the last Will. By conducting a Certainty Will Search, we were able to eliminate the risk of a later Will coming to light in the future once the estate had been distributed and can prove that we did everything we could to find the last Will before distributing the £300,000 estate.”
In this case a previous Will was found and didn’t affect the way the estate was to be distributed but on a daily basis Certainty Will Searches locate Wills that revoke the Will presented to the instructed solicitor for probate. Carrying out a Certainty Will Search, that can be claimed against the estate, provides the solicitor with a Will Search Report that can be placed on file, demonstrating that measures were taken to understand if an unknown Will existed and therefore mitigates risk of claims against the estate.
For further information on the type of searches you can carry out, please contact Certainty the National Will Register on 0330 100 3660 or email enquiries@certainty.co.uk [2].