Member Article

National Will Register hits milestone 10 millionth Will registered

The National Will Register has today announced that it has now registered more than 10 million wills in its system. According to insurance provider Canada Life UK, 2 in 5 UK adults, or 21 million people, have made a will which means that The National Will Register now has nearly half of all UK wills written registered in its system.

Founded in 2006, The National Will Register was created to respond to the personal challenges of trying to locate the existence of the will of a loved one after they had passed away. With no central record of wills written previously existing in the UK, the process of finding a will was left to cold-calling solicitors and will writers in the main, making for a long, arduous and distressing situation at a difficult time.

Following its acquisition two years ago by leading software and services provider, Advanced, The National Will Register has evolved its service for the Wills and Probate sector to offer an easy-to-use digital platform to register wills, tagging their location, enabling them to be located in a more effective and efficient way.

Since then, The National Will Register has grown to become the trademarked National Will Register for the UK providing Will Registration and Certainty Will Search services to the public and Wills and probate professionals in its mission to ensure that no Will is left unknown, untraced or unused at the time it is needed.

One in five located Wills impact estate administration

The National Will Register records the existence of a Will for an individual and where it is located, so that it can be searched for and found at the crucial time it is needed.

Scott Taylor, Partner at Moore Barlow, comments, “The National Will Register has proven to be a vital resource for both providing our clients with peace of mind through their Will registration service and offering certainty in establishing whether a Will has been made or not and where the Will is located.

“Through our work in our contentious and non-contentious trust and probate teams, we understand how vital it is to have all the facts at the start of probate and estate administration. This is made all that much easier now that The National Will Register has over 10 million Wills and we’re delighted to be able to have such a capable and easy-to-use service to call upon.”

In 2022, at least one in five instances where a Will was located through a Certainty Will Search impacted the way that an estate was administered, as a Will was found in instances either where a Will was unknown to the executor, or where the executor only had knowledge of a Will made prior to the one located.

Doug Hargrove, Managing Director for Legal and Education at Advanced, spoke of the importance of the 10 million Will milestone for accuracy in the sector: “The National Will Register is a key tool for anyone involved in handling the affairs of a loved one after their passing.”

“By having a register of over 10 million Wills available to search, and additional services to locate unregistered Wills with other law firms and will writers, we come closer to protecting the wishes of everyone who has made a Will, and those who are looking to do right by them through what is an already difficult process.”

“We’re delighted to have reached 10 million Wills in the system as we are now able to help so many more people. With every Will registered, we get closer to ensuring that every Will made in the UK can be found and acted upon when it is needed.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Advanced .