A national register of wills would help make a complicated process easier after someone dies
Britain's archaic probate system is designed for the 19th century and structured almost perfectly for 21st-century solicitors and banks to rip off the unsuspecting – which is most people, given that they are likely to be mourning at the time. When I spoke to Steve Pett, who runs a low-cost probate service in Sussex, his conclusion after dealing with hundreds of estates is that "the system is just basically crap".
The biggest headache most people encounter is establishing the facts when someone dies – where their accounts are, what insurance policies they have, and so on. No one likes to talk about the looming death of a loved one, but asking beforehand avoids countless problems later.
Having a will helps, of course – if you know where it is. Bizarrely, we do not have a central searchable register of all wills in the UK. One small reform could be for the government to require all wills to be submitted and registered, and to make the register available for the public to search, for a small fee.
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