One of the questions we get asked A LOT is ‘Are you a solicitor?’, so I thought that in today’s Blog, I should cover this to help you better understand how we work.

The simple answer to the question above, is NO. We are not solicitors. However, we do use our partner solicitor to produce our wills and trust documents. So, the next obvious question is ‘Why do I need Inheritance Legal Services then, why wouldn’t I just go straight to the solicitor?’

Well, the main reason is cost and service. You see, as we specialise in ONLY the field of estate planning, we put lots of training, research and resources into this area. We arrange and attend the appointments with clients, plan their estate and advise them. We then take all of the instructions and do all of the paperwork, at which point we hand it over to our solicitor to produce the final document. So when you look at it, we do probably 95% of the work and as they only do the final part, their charges to us are very low. We then pass this cost saving on to our clients through fixed fee services. You see, makes a bit more sense now, hey?

The strange thing to get your head around is that if you bypassed us and went straight to our team of solicitors direct, you would be charged more than doing it through us!

I would like to point out that although we are not solicitors, our company directors are members of the Society Of Will Writers and we are also monitored (voluntarily) by Trading Standards as they approve us under their ‘Buy With Confidence’ scheme. You can find out more about this at the top of the website.

This really should be a simple decision for you when it comes to choice of who to use for your estate planning needs. People are often put off by solicitors with their grand, bricked up intimidating buildings and the possibility of hourly charges plus many solicitors do not work on fixed fees so it is difficult to get an answer on cost, usually the answer is ‘our costs start from’. At Inheritance Legal Services, we work on fixed fees with no hidden charges or costs. All of our appointments and advice are free and with no obligation. Our 4 offices are deliberately in the form of glass shop front offices to welcome you in to ask any questions.

Finally, yes you can make a will or lasting power of attorney yourself. You can buy a DIY kit or do it on the internet very cheaply, but there is a reason it is cheap. You get what you pay for and if you do not use the right language or unnecessarily over complicate things, it can cause HUGE problems. It could end up costing you more than if you had used a professional, or cause your family HUGE problems when it comes to your death and the will is easily contested or void.

You are planning what happens to the assets you have built up and worked for all your life, why would you not use a professional company to arrange what happens to them?

If you would like to discuss any of this further please feel free to call me on 01553 860123 or email Ryan.Taylor@inheritancewills.co.uk

-Ryan