Will Query

Curious Scot

An elderly unmarried cousin (I'll call him Jim) died recently. In the months leading up to his death, he told several people, relatives and otherwise, that he had left them various assets in his will. After Jim’s death, when his will was read, the stipulations in the will were completely different to what he had being telling all these people. Most of those who he had told were to benefit from his will got nothing at all. While those concerned were very disappointed about this, they were prepared to accept it and move on. However, when they learned that the will was made in 2005 they were very surprised at their exclusion because Jim was very capable of looking after his own affairs up to a few days before his death and would have had ample opportunity to change his will by then. They felt that he wouldn’t have had them believe that he was going to bequeath them something without him having already stated this in his will.

If Jim did decide to change his 2005 will in the years afterwards, and he made a new will with a firm of solicitors other than those he dealt with in 2005, how could the family find out if this was the case? The family have already enquired of all the solicitors in his local and neighbouring towns and drawn a blank. Jim drove around the country a lot so it wouldn’t be a surprise to learn he had made a new will in some other part of the country! Due to the cost involved, contesting the 2005 will isn’t an option for these people.

Do wills have to be registered centrally after they are made, and if so, how would one access any such ‘central’ register of wills?

Does anybody have any suggestions about what the family could do?

Thanks.

nuac

Mod
The family should consult an experienced solicitor
Leaving open for general discussion subject to forum rule on legal advice

splinter65

This is so commonplace it’s like a cliche at this stage.
In fact if an elderly unmarried relative was assuring me that he/she was leaving me the bottom field or the rental property in Lahinch I would assume that either I was getting nothing or there wasn’t actually a bottom field/rental property

Peregrinus

No, wills are not registered when they are made. Your will is your own private affair; what you do with it, and whether you tell anybody what is in it, is your own concern. This puts you in control, but it also means that it's up to you to arrange matter so that, when you die, your personal representatives will know that you have made a will, and where it is. They'll check the obvious places - your desk, your filing cabinet, any solicitor or bank that you are known to have dealt with. If you keep it anywhere other than these places you are effectively hiding your will, and if you hide it effectively enough it will never be found, and will never be implemented.

There's not much the family can do. They could up an ad in the Law Society Gazette, which goes to all solicitors, asking for any solicitor who made a will for Jim to contact them. These ads rarely yield results, however. And they could ask themselves, knowing Jim as we do, and knowing that he was "very capable of looking after his affairs", do we think he might have hidden a will and, if so, where would he choose? If Jim went to a solicitor that he had no other dealings with in a distant town and had him do a will, the solicitor would certainly have pointed out the need to make sure the will would come into the hands of his family on his death. This hasn't happened, which suggests that either Jim wasn't as capable of looking after his affairs as you think, or Jim didn't make a will after the 2005 will.