Recently there have been some well-publicised horror stories regarding wills prepared by unregulated will writers.

A BBC Panorama investigation last year claimed will-writing services were unfairly taking thousands of pounds from customers and their loved ones.

More recently, the Legal Services Consumer Panel has called for will writing services to be regulated following an investigation into the quality of wills and poor sales practices.

The Panel’s mystery shopping research looked at the quality of wills prepared by solicitors, will writers, banks and online wills and came up with the statistic that a quarter of the wills failed for being not legally valid or of poor or very poor overall quality.

Crucially, too many wills failed to reflect what the client intended and made other basic errors.

Some did not cover all of the estate and sometimes clients’ requests had been left out or the actions specified in the wills were potentially illegal.

The survey also found cases where wills were drafted by ‘cutting and pasting’ from software packages without the required legal knowledge.

The Legal Services Board (LSB) is now holding a statutory investigation into how best to protect consumers in the will-writing market.

This highlights the importance of instructing a professional, such as a solicitor or legal executive, to draft a will as they have relevant qualifications, undergo continual training, must be insured and provide redress if things go wrong.

If clients use a solicitor in the first instance, not only can they offer the correct legal advice taking into account the relevant domestic and financial situations, but they can also advise on other services such as the creation of trusts, transfer of assets and powers of attorney.