Welcome to Will Assist Ltd and thank you for taking the time to look at our site.  My name is Malcolm Shand and I am the director of the company. As you have probably already read, we are a newly created organisation with an ambition to establish a national presence as a leading provider of estate planning solutions. My background is in the mortgage and financial protection arena and during the course of my discussions with clients the subject of a will often crops up. It always amazed me how many people somewhat sheepishly answered no when asked the question "Do you have a will in place?", and the reason they are sheepish is because they know full well that they should have one. As the majority of these clients then admitted that they should have a will and asked me to do something about it, I then found myself wanting to learn more about the mechanics of estate planning and it dawned on me how well this "dovetailed" into my mortgage and financial protection business. After all if I have helped a client to purchase or re-mortgage their home and protect it with the necessary policies, why not also go that extra mile and ensure that these assets go to who they want them to go to when they die!  The problem I found was being able to refer my clients to estate planning specialists who could provide the reliable, transparent and thorough service to them which I insist upon. I started to find that my clients were either not being advised correctly, were being given the "hardsell" to agree to additional services at extra cost or were simply not being communicated with properly.  I am great believer that if you truly have a vision of how you want your clients to be dealt with and the impression you want them to be left of you and your company, then the best way is to do it yourself! This is what motivated me to join the Society of Will Writers and through their "College" I qualified to become a member and gain the skills necessary to get out there and help busy people like you to sort their estate planning as well as becoming familiar with the society's strict code of professional conduct. The final stage was to create a company to be able to roll this service out to people and to establish an unrivalled level of service within the profession.

There are of course many different ways of writing your will. It is possible to do it "on the cheap" and buy a £20 pack from your local retailer which enables you to write the will yourself, but would you really feel comfortable in putting your wishes down in writing without some form of professional advice and guidance? The basic format for a will is fairly straightforward but it would only take a missed signature or the wrong person witnessing to render the whole document invalid. Will Assist Ltd offer an "attestation" service for a small additional fee. The attestation is a very fancy  term for the signing and witnessing of the actual will document which creates it as a legally enforcable instrument. If you use our service we will visit you to attend the signing of your will and act as one of your witnesses if required,  as well as crucially overseeing the process to ensure that the document is valid. Another very common route people take to write their wills is a solicitor as they perceive that as a legal document it is only they that can execute the task. This is perfectly understandable but ask yourself these questions- Would my solicitor visit me in my own home at a time to suit me and first of all carry out a consultation at his or her cost to establish my needs?  Would my solicitor then visit me a second time in my own home, at my convenience, to oversee the attestation? The answers to these questions I'm sure would be a decisive "no" unless you were prepared to pay handsomely for the privilege! So with Will Assist Ltd you get the best of both worlds, ie a fully qualified professional who will come to you and arrange your will without you having to set foot outside your front door.

Although we’re a new company, we have a very clear idea of how we intend to treat our clients, the most important asset of our business (please see our client care policy on the home page).  We promise that we will always communicate with our clients in a clear and jargon-free manner. We promise that we deal with our clients in fair, ethical and open manner and will only ever give advice or make recommendations if it is clearly in the client’s best interests. After all, if we look after you then we hope that you’ll tell your friends and family about us! Our aim is to bring together members of the public and businesses who seek advice with professional practitioners across the UK who can help. Our first contact with you will be a telephone consultation in which we will get to know a bit about you and if you are happy to move forward we will then arrange your initial home consultation at our cost. Being a member of the society of will writers, we have access to hundreds of like-minded professionals across the UK, so if it is more convenient then we will arrange for your consultation to be carried out by your local practitioner and will of course provide you with their details.

I sincerely hope that you find our website helpful and informative. My final word in this section would be, whether it is through Will Assist Ltd or elsewhere, please get that will written!