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Posts Tagged ‘solicitors’
Your Will May be Fake
Thursday, August 20th, 2009
Many people are getting scammed when they seek assistance in writing their wills. A lot of solicitors can draft wills; however, these solicitors are not properly trained nor qualified to do so. In fact, there are many will-writers who don’t need to be regulated by Law Society before they offer their services.
According to a Liberal Democrat spokesperson for regulatory reform, enterprise, and business, Lorely Burt, “It’s no exaggeration that will-writing has now become a hunting ground for dishonest, incompetent, and fly-by-night operators.” Some offer a low fee but would keep adding extra charges for extra services and some involve outright scamming.
Since will-writers are not regulated, some problems also arise out of incompetence. For instance, an old lady wants to exclude her son from inheritance since he stole from her in the past. She made a will for her estate to be given to her care givers instead. But since she just used a will-writer who advertised in the local paper, her will was challenged by her son. And since it has been witnessed and drafted incorrectly, the will was declared invalid – effectively, she has no will and her son actually inherited everything after all.
Therefore, be very careful in looking for assistance to draft your will. To be safe, seek help from qualified estate planning attorneys. You can find many of them in online directories all over the web.
Tags: attorneys, directories, draft, Estate Planning, Law Society, Liberal Democrat, Lorely Burt, online, scamming, solicitors, web, will, will-writers, Wills
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A Father’s Secret Will
Thursday, August 20th, 2009
There was a case where the father died five years ago and a daughter discovered that there was a will kept secret from her by the solicitors. It emerged that the solicitors were holding on the father’s will and the daughter was named as a joint executor together with the stepmother. The child was never informed about this and it came as a shock to her when she discovered it. The father clearly left everything equally to her and her stepbrothers but she did not receive any inheritance.
There might be a case for this or there might be none. The first point is that if the father held joint property with the stepmother, everything could have passed automatically to her anyway, regardless of the contents of the will. However, this is unlikely in second marriages, and if the will is valid, there’s certainly a slip-up when the father died and the will’s solicitors failed to inform the daughter of her rights.
In a case like this, the daughter can consult a lawyer and file proceedings to recover assets from the estate of the stepmother - the costs of these proceedings should be covered by the solicitors. They may also bear costs of consequential losses such as capital growth and interest accruing to the assets of the stepmother.
Tags: daughter, estate, father, inheritance, joint executor, lawyer, losses, proceedings, rights, solicitors, stepmother, will
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