One of our safe guardians wrote to us to explain a couple of reasons why she is adamant to get her clients to use National Will Safe;
“When I used to work in private practice for a number of law firms and I saw how they stored their Wills – in a metal filing cabinet (not fireproof) with no key and an archaic filing system. Several times I have witnessed the fact that old Wills which were thought to be stored with the law firms somehow were not in the cabinet when they were needed!
Also, now running my own legal practice, an elderly single lady client I did a Will for who had no children and was never married insisted on keeping her Will at home. Despite the fact that I did try to persuade her that if it went missing and her friend (who she had appointed as executor) couldn’t find it, the laws of intestacy would mean that her estate did not go where it should, and the person handling it would not be the person she had chosen. Needless to say, when she died, I had a number of her estranged nephews on the phone to me asking me to tell them where her Will was. Obviously they’d found some correspondence but no Will. Fortunately I had a signed acknowledgement from her to confirm receipt of the original Will. As far as I know the estate went to estranged family members and not to friends and charities as she had hoped.”
We take security of clients documents very seriously, don’t let your clients take any unnecessary risks.