By Legal Futures’ Associates Certainty National Will Register
Woolliscrofts Solicitors are a firm who have been serving individuals, families and businesses throughout Stoke-on-Trent, Newcastle-under-Lyme and the wider community of Staffordshire and Cheshire for over a century. The firm incorporate Certainty Will Search as part of their process when distributing an estate.
Ray Basnett, Solicitor at Woolliscrofts Solicitors explains the case: “We were already in possession of a Will that the deceased had written in 2016 that appointed our firm as the Executor of the estate. Part of our internal process when acting as a Professional Executor is to conduct a Certainty Will Search to check if no later unknown Wills exist.”
“We conducted a Will Search Combined that searches for Wills that have been registered on The National Will Register and for Wills that have not been registered. This ensured that we had done everything that we could to locate any unknown later Wills of the deceased.”
The Certainty Will Search located an earlier Will from 1999 that was held by a solicitor firm less than half a mile away.
Ray concludes: “The Certainty Will Search located a Will that the deceased had made 17 years prior to the one that we were already aware of. By conducting the Will search we were confident that we were in possession of the last Will and could proceed with applying for the Grant of Probate and therefore, could distribute the £130,000 estate to the correct beneficiaries named in the 2016 Will.”
“As a solicitor when acting as a Professional Executor, it is not worth the risk of distributing an estate without checking that no later Will exists. A Certainty Will Search is an allowable disbursement of the estate and allows you to proceed with confidence that you are distributing an estate correctly and without any risk that a later Will may come to light in the future.”
For further information on the type of searches you can carry out, please contact us on 0330 100 3660 or email enquiries@certainty.co.uk.
