Twenty years of lobbying has culminated in the launch of a UK-wide online wills register run from Birmingham.
Certainty.co.uk will enable rapid registration of a will and the ability to search for lost or missing wills.
Designed exclusively for use by members of the Law Society and the Society of Trust and Estate Planners (STEP) members in conjunction with the general public, the register cost more than £1 million to develop. Certainty is rolling out throughout the UK in conjunction with legal practices that participate as founder members of the register.
Those in the West Midlands include Martineau, Cobbetts, Tyndallwoods, Brownings, Blakemores, Scotts Holt and Sellars, Garner Canning & Co, Williamson & Soden and Wallace Robinson & Morgan.
Certainty chairman Kevin Martin, a former Law Society president, said: “ We believe Certainty is the first organisation to actually provide a compliant solution to the chronic problem of will registration.”
In a recent public survey commissioned by Certainty, 67 per cent of people surveyed were unaware of the location of their parents’ will.
Certainty.co.uk is launching with an offer of 12.8 million free will registrations to the public in association with solicitors.
Nigel McGinnity, chief executive of Certainty said: “Our commitment to provide 12.8 million free registrations to the public and our dynamic relationship with the legal profession ensures the success of the register.’’
Laurence Collings, head of the Wills and Probate Department at Brownings Solicitors in Redditch, said: “We see the register as being an essential and vital way of ensuring the whereabouts of a will is known and recorded.’’
