A Will is one of the most important documents that we will come to write in our lives, and many people will highlight the importance of writing a Will particular in your later years as a way of ensuring that your wishes are adhered to.
However, when it comes to writing your Will, there is another important task to do alongside that, and that is to register your Will.
The importance of having a Will cannot be understated. It empowers you to decide what happens to your property, estate, and who inherits what – rather than that decision be left to the law of the land. It allows you to make provisions for your spouse or partner, your children, your wider family, and friends – even charity.
But a written Will is only worth it if it can be found. If a Will isn’t found, your estate may be administered intestate (based on no Will made) in error – because there is no Will for them to work from.
This is not an uncommon problem, either. In a recent survey conducted by The National Will Register, over two-thirds of UK adults said that they would not know where to find their parents’ Wills – and in many cases whether there was a Will written at all.
What this means is simple: even with writing a Will – the chances of it being found in good time are short unless you keep a good life folder or discuss it with your loved ones.
Plus, then there is the issue of knowing exactly where your Will is. If you keep a Will with a solicitor and have done for many years you may find that the solicitor has changed address, name, and potentially has even closed or merged with another firm. In the vast majority of those cases, you will have been informed of such changes – but some get through the cracks and this could have been many years ago and if no record is made of it then it can make finding the Will for your loved ones even more difficult.
How Will registration makes finding Wills easy
Registering your Will with The National Will Register is a different but equally vital service to Will storage. It is where you register the location of a Will on a database so that it can be found later by your executor or beneficiaries when the time comes that it is needed.
With over 10 million Wills in the system, over half of all Wills written in the UK, people rely on the The National Will Register every day to advise of the location of their loved one’s Wills once they have passed. All that is required to register is a few simple details about the Will such as whose it is, where it is and when it was made.
One in five found Wills also impact estate administration. Meaning that a Will is found that was previously unknown or supersedes a known Will. Making it more important to ensure that your Will is easy enough to find through Will registration.
Find out more about Will registration on the UK’s National Will Register by clicking here.