A single will with Choice Wills is £225, and mirror wills for a couple are £450. That is a fixed fee, agreed with you before any work begins, so there are no surprises later. The first consultation is free, and a home visit is included. More involved estates cost more, and I will always tell you why.
It is one of the first questions people ask me, usually with a slightly apologetic tone, as though they oughtn't to be thinking about money at a time like this. But of course they should. Cost is a perfectly sensible thing to ask about, and I would far rather you knew the figure at the outset than found it buried in the small print halfway through.
The honest answer is that a will can cost anything from a few pounds for a kit off the shelf to several hundred for one written and checked by someone who knows what they are doing. The trouble is that the cheapest option is not always the one that ends up costing your family the least. Let me set out what things actually cost, and what you are paying for.
What Choice Wills charges
I keep my pricing simple, because I dislike being surprised by a bill and I assume you do too. A single will is £225. Mirror wills for a couple, which are two matching wills that leave everything to each other and then on to the children, are £450. That is the whole fee, fixed and agreed before I start.
The first consultation is free, and there is no obligation to go ahead after it. If I come out to see you, that home visit is part of the price, not an extra. I would rather sit at your kitchen table than have you traipse into an office, and it costs you nothing more to do it that way.
I settle the fee with you before I lift a pen. In over twenty years I have never sent a client a bill they were not expecting, and I do not intend to start.
What affects the cost of a will
Most wills I write are straightforward, and the fixed fee covers them comfortably. Some are not, and it would be dishonest of me to pretend otherwise. A few things push the price up, and all of them come down to the same thing, which is how much work and care the will actually needs.
The main ones are:
- Trusts. If you want to protect a share of your home for your children, or provide for a vulnerable relative, a trust may be needed. A property trust will starts a little higher than a standard will because there is more to draft and more to explain.
- Business interests. If you own a company or a share in one, your will needs to deal with that carefully, and it often sits alongside other planning. That is more involved work and priced accordingly.
- Complicated families or wishes. Second marriages, stepchildren, gifts to several people, conditions on how money is used. None of it is a problem, but it takes longer to get right.
If your affairs point in any of those directions, I will say so at the free consultation and give you a fixed figure before we go any further. You will never find yourself agreeing to something without knowing the cost of it.
Will writer versus solicitor versus online kit
There are three common ways to get a will, and they are not priced the same. I will be as fair as I can about all three, including my own trade.
An online kit or a DIY form is the cheapest by a distance. For the very simplest estate it can do the job. But a will is a formal legal document, and it has to be signed and witnessed in a particular way or it is not valid at all. I have seen kits filled in with the best of intentions that would not have stood up, because a witness also happened to be a beneficiary, or the wording left a gap nobody spotted. The person who wrote it is not around to answer for it, and by the time the mistake surfaces it is far too late to mend. A cheap will that fails is a false economy of the worst kind, because the family pays for it, not you.
A solicitor is a qualified lawyer and can certainly write your will. They tend to charge more, partly because they carry the overheads of a wider legal practice, and for a complex estate that expertise can be well worth having. For a straightforward will, though, you are often paying for a breadth of service you do not need.
A will writer like me specialises in this one area and nothing else. That focus is why I can offer good value on a proper, tailored will without cutting corners. I am a member of the Society of Will Writers, which sets standards for the profession and requires me to hold professional indemnity insurance. It is not the same as being a solicitor, and I would never claim it was, but for most people it is the sensible middle ground between a risky kit and a larger bill.
Are cheap or "free" wills worth it?
You will see wills advertised for next to nothing, and sometimes for nothing at all. "Free will fortnight" schemes, charity tie-ins, offers through your bank. I am not going to tell you they are all a con, because some are perfectly genuine, but I would ask you to look at what sits behind the offer.
A free will is rarely free to produce, so someone is being paid somewhere. Often the arrangement asks, or gently expects, that you leave a gift to a particular charity, which is fine if you meant to and less so if you did not. Sometimes the low headline price is a way in, and the real money is made afterwards on storage fees, on updates charged each time you change a comma, or on probate work that the same firm hopes to handle on your estate later, when the bill can run to thousands. There is nothing improper in any of that, but it is worth knowing before you sign, because the cheap will can turn out to be the expensive one.
My advice is plain. Ask what is included, ask what happens next, and ask what it costs to change the will or store it. If the answers are clear and you are happy, good. If they are vague, be careful.
Are there ongoing costs?
A will is not something you pay for every year, but there are two things worth budgeting for over time.
The first is storage. Your will needs to be kept somewhere safe and findable. You can keep it at home, and many people do, but an original that is lost or damaged causes real difficulty. I offer secure storage with unlimited amendments for £59.99 a year for a single will, which means if your circumstances change you can update it as often as you need without a fresh charge each time. It is entirely optional. Plenty of my clients look after their own, and that is fine.
The second is keeping the will current. A will should be reviewed after any large change in your life, a marriage, a divorce, a new grandchild, a house move. It is worth knowing that a marriage or civil partnership automatically revokes an existing will in England and Wales, unless the will was made in contemplation of that marriage, so a good many people are walking around with a will that the law has already torn up. If you would like to read more, I have written separately about what happens if you die without a will, which sets out why keeping one in place matters.
Is it worth paying for a will?
I would say so, but then I would, so let me put it another way. A will is one of the few sums you will ever spend entirely on other people. You get no use from it yourself. Everything it does happens after you are gone, for the family you leave behind.
Set the £225 against what an estate can cost when there is no valid will, or a botched one. The delay, the extra legal work, the tax that better planning might have reduced, the arguments between people who were fond of one another until the money came into it. Measured against that, a properly written will is one of the better value things you can do for your family. It is not an expense so much as a kindness with a price tag on it.
If you would like to talk it through, the first conversation costs nothing and there is no pressure to go ahead. You can get in touch with me here, and I will give you a straight answer on price before you commit to anything.
Common questions
How much does a will cost at Choice Wills?
A single will is £225 and mirror wills for a couple are £450. That is a fixed fee, agreed with you before any work begins, and it includes a home visit across Northamptonshire. The first consultation is free.
Why are some wills so cheap?
A very low price usually means the will is a template with no real advice behind it, or the fee is a way to sell you something else afterwards, such as expensive storage or probate services tied to your estate. Read what is actually included before you judge the price.
Do you charge extra for home visits?
No. A home visit across Northamptonshire, and out to Milton Keynes, Bedford and Buckingham, is included in the fee. Everywhere else in England and Wales I meet people by video or telephone at no extra cost.
What's the difference between a will writer and a solicitor?
Both can write a valid will. A solicitor is a qualified lawyer who tends to charge more and handle a wider range of legal work. A will writer specialises in wills and estate planning and usually offers better value for a straightforward will. I am a member of the Society of Will Writers.
Are online wills any good?
A cheap online kit can be fine for the very simplest estate, but it is easy to get wrong, and a will that is signed or witnessed incorrectly is not valid. There is no one to catch a mistake, and no one will know until it is too late to fix it.