In addition to searching in England and Wales, Certainty the National Will Register [1] now provides the capability to search law firms and Will writers to see if a Will exists in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
How does this help me?
You may be distributing an estate where the deceased lived in England or Wales but had family roots, or had lived or worked during their lifetime in Scotland or Northern Ireland. You may therefore feel it important to establish if an unknown Will or a later Will exists in these countries.
A Certainty Will Search is proven to protect against an unknown Will or later Will coming forward after distribution. In fact, at least one in every ten Certainty Will Searches does just that and identifies and locates an unknown Will or a Will that supersedes the one that was to be used to distribute the estate with!
To search locations in Scotland and Northern Ireland you will need to carry out a Certainty Will Search Combined which performs the following:
- Checks the National Will Register (7.7 million Wills records in the system and rising daily)
- Issues a Will Search Notification in geographically targeted areas for Wills that have not been registered (issued to law firms both members of Certainty the National Will Register and non-members) and Will writers (IPW, ISPW, SWW, SSWW members) in Scotland, Northern Ireland, England & Wales.
- A Will search report is issued at the end of the Certainty Will Search. This can be placed on file to demonstrate that adequate steps have been taken to prove the last Will or that a Will did not exist
A Certainty Will Search Combined is an allowable disbursement from the estate of £95 +vat
There are various ways to implement a Certainty Will Search Combined, you can:
- Visit our website –www.nationalwillregister.co.uk
- Use your TOUCH members area – www.certaintysolicitors.co.uk [2]
- Call the Will Search Team – 0330 100 3660
- Use Live Chat from the site
Email enquiries@certainty.co.uk [3]