Archive for May 2009
Birmingham Law Society Legal column – May
Friday, 1st May 2009Birmingham Law Society Legal column – May By Jon Lloyd, joint honorary secretary of Birmingham Law Society, member of the Non-contentious Business Committee and chair of the Birmingham branch of Solicitors for the Elderly. A search in the local paper or on the web for ‘making a will’ or ‘probate’ will reveal a plethora of services on offer, few of them from solicitors. So how do they measure up to the traditional services offered by the legal profession? As with most consumer choices there are three big considerations -convenience, price and quality. In the advertisements, making a will sounds simple; the headline fee often appears attractive; the subtext is that it is a lot cheaper than using a solicitor. Unfortunately, more and more cases regarding unsatisfactory will writers are coming to light. Among the concerns are poor drafting, meaning that a testator’s intentions are not given effect; a failure to take family circumstances into account; and unscrupulous charging for add-ons (in one case, £600 for ‘lifetime storage’).
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