Hayley Garnett warns of Will Writing companies

"I saw an elderly lady recently who went to an unregulated Will Writing Company and said she wanted to protect her home from being sold for care home fees, should she require such care in the future. She was advised to produce a Will and put her home in a Trust.

They produced very technical documentation that was very lengthy and then charged her nearly £3,000. The lady told me they had been very helpful as they had allowed her to pay them monthly!

The company has now contacted her and said they needed to amend the paperwork and she needed to re-sign a document. The reason for re-signing was unclear although the inference was that they realised they had made an error and needed to correct it. The document they sent her was a Deed but did not have the correct signature clause meaning that Deed would be invalid.

They had sent her a letter initially saying Trusts were a good idea to help mitigate Inheritance Tax liabilities. There was no mention of avoiding care home fees, as presumably, they knew this could not be done.

I went through the documents and told her what had been produced originally was completely unnecessary. It is not possible to entirely protect your home from being taken by Social Services for care home fees. If it was, everyone would do it and nobody would pay any care fees! Her home was worth £100k so there was no prospect of her ever paying Inheritance Tax. There were also lots of clauses in there that were not required, presumably to pad out the paperwork and justify their ridiculous fee.

In short she had been miss-sold the entire product and paid extortionate fees for the privilege.

I told her if she had wanted us to do that work for her, we being trained solicitors with specialist expertise in such matters, and being regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority, and having insurance to cover any issues in the future, we would have probably charged her around £500 plus vat.  Although of course we would have advised her that she wanted to do was not possible and did not do what she wanted it to do.

Please do not use unregulated companies to produce documentation that can have such far reaching effects. Use a regulated specialist solicitor who is fully insured so you have proper comeback if there are any issues, and who will charge you a reasonable rate for work that will help you achieve your goals."