Just like with any other purchase, shopping around for will-writing and probate services can save you money, and new guidelines from the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) demonstrate how. The guidelines help protect consumers as they seek will-writing and probate services. Estate Legacy Services and our partners Collective Legal Solutions welcome the OFT’s advice.
The guidance has been introduced to prevent consumers from losing money during what could be one of the most important (and potentially confusing) legal purchases of their life. The OFT estimates that failure to shop around when choosing will-writing and probate services is costing consumers around £40 million a year.
£40m a year lost by not choosing estate services wisely
As the OFT guidelines point out, the costs for a professional executor to administer an estate (probate) vary considerably, from £3,400 at the lower end of the scale up to £9,000 for an average estate. The cost of probate is usually between 1.5%- 4% of the estate’s total value. The difference between 1.5% and 4% doesn’t sound much but if the estate is sizeable, this could mean hundreds of thousands of pounds.
Chris Dingley is Co-Director of Collective Legal Solutions, our trusted partners who are experts in the field of inheritance planning and wealth protection. Like us, he welcomes the OFT’s consumer guidelines. “The new guidelines reflect the values, ethos and working practices that we have always adhered to,” he says. “We whole-heartedly support the OFT’s efforts to make charges for probate services both completely transparent and fair, and we urge consumers to act on the OFT’s good advice by shopping around.”
The advice from the OFT (and from us) is clear: do shop around when looking for will-writing, powers of attorney, probate, trust funds, estate planning or chartered tax advice services. You could be one of the millions of Britons saving money by choosing wisely.
Take a look at the OFT guidelines at http://www.consumerdirect.gov.uk/before_you_buy/thinking_about/Will_writing/
Photo credit http://www.flickr.com/photos/doug88888/3064351634/sizes/t/
