Public Will Search
Finds Hit 45%
Record High in
January & February
2018
All Wills stored with The National Will Archive are automatically registered with
Certainty The National Will Register. But what actually is the importance of
registering your Wills?
In January and February 2018, Certainty
Will Searches undertaken by members of
the public have produced some interesting
results that are worth noting.
Certainty Will Searches instigated directly
by the public (rather than through their
Will Writer) resulted in 45% of the
searches finding a Will.
The Certainty Will Search team took
feedback from 100 members of the
public who had undertaken a Certainty
Will Search to understand their reasons
for searching:
a) 29% believed a Will did not exist and
that the estate was intestate but as a
PR wanted to safeguard their position
by searching
b) 24% held a Will but as an Executor
wanted to ensure that a later Will did
18
The Society of Will Writers
not exist and appear after they had
distributed the estate
c) 4% were trying to discover if a Will
existed because they felt the estate
should not have been treated as
intestate or the Will used to obtain the
grant of probate was not the last Will
In the case of a) this equated to 29
individuals searching for a Will that they
did not think existed. The Certainty Will
Search found 11 Wills for PRs who say
they were adamant that a Will had not
been written.
In the case of b) this equated to 24
individual searches by Executors who
believed they held the last Will, and
had undertaken a search purely as a
precautionary and comfort measure. 6
later Wills were found.