Where there is a will, there’s a way

But what to do when there isn’t a will?

Photo by Melinda Gimpel on Unsplash

Everyone should have a will - and yet the majority of adults in the UK do not have one.

Until recently the government published online the “Bona Vacantia List” - a list of everyone who had died, has not left a will (“died intestate”) and has no known heirs. The BBC showed quite convincingly that fraudsters were looking at the list, quickly producing a fake will naming the fraudster as the sole beneficiary and executor, and then successfully claiming the estate. The BBC concluded that “stealing a dead person’s property and financial assets appears to be extremely easy”.

Following the BBC investigation, the government has stopped making the list available. But that too is a problem - it is used by bona fide “heir finder” companies. They find lost relatives and - for a fee - alert them that a relative has died, and that they appear to be the heir. That is a useful service - without it, the money goes to the government.

I have an idea to sort out this mess.

Writing a will is boring. And a bit awkward - you have to do it on paper, and get a neighbour or friend to literally witness your actual handwritten signature. You then have a piece of paper which, in many cases, gets filed away in a box - that is, to all intents and purposes, lost. When you die your executor needs the original, not a copy, so you can’t even send copies to various people to reduce the chance of it getting lost. The Courts and Tribunals Service will store it for you - but only if you post it to them, with a cheque (!) for £23, and have a witness sign the catchily titled form PA7ENV to say that you want the government to store your will. It is all a hassle, so people put it off.

I propose to make it much easier. We can do away with all witnessing of wills if we use existing government ID services. For example, when you apply for a passport, the government knows that you are who you say you are. Passport applications are more secure than getting a neighbour to sign a piece of paper. For sure, my neighbour recognises me, but when I die the chance of a solicitor or the probate office recognising my neighbour’s signature is precisely zero.

When you apply for a passport, the government should prompt you to make or upload your will. If you do that as part of the passport application, you would not need a witness or to pay £27 to have it stored. The application process would include a draft, with prompts about whether you have a partner, children, and so on. It could ask whether there are charities you want to support - you could type in a name, and it would automatically complete using an auto-completion function linked to the Charity Commission website. It could ask whether you have any preferences when you die - burial, cremation, songs to be sung etc. You could update your will any time you liked, and you would be prompted to do so when you renew your passport.

At present, when a person dies, their next of kin obtains a death certificate from the local council. That person then uses the government’s “tell us once” service. This means that all sorts of things happen automatically - the person’s state pension and any other benefits stop, their passport and driving licence are cancelled, and various other things as well. It is a useful service, and it could also make the will available automatically, saving people having to hunt for that bit of paper.

My solution would make it easier and cheaper to make a will, increase the numbers making wills, and make it less likely that the will would be lost. It would cost the government virtually nothing to implement. I literally can’t see a downside.