Be Very Careful with this "company"
We were alarmed when we discovered that my parents-in-law had paid nearly £6,000 to The Will Partners.
We could find no active registration for "The Will Partners" as a limited company on Companies House, and it appears to be a trading name for one man - an unregulated estate planning consultant, a Mr Newman.
Despite claiming on his Facebook page that he is a solicitor, he isn’t.
His office address is a multi-occupancy unit shared with entirely unrelated local businesses, including a taxi company. In our view, the name "The Will Partners" may lead clients to believe they are dealing with a traditional, fully regulated law firm.
My in-laws originally sought three services: setting up a Lasting Power of Attorney (LPA), making a minor name update to a Will, and exploring a trust to protect their home against future care fees.
Here are the facts regarding how these services were handled:
• Lasting Power of Attorney: My in-laws were asked for a cheque for £396 to cover application fees. They were asked to leave the payee blank. For context, anyone can complete LPA forms online or download the pack entirely FREE from the official government website. The standard mandatory filing fee is £92 per application to the Office of the Public Guardian (you need 4 - hence £396). Incidentally – when we sat down with them to complete the LPA forms some weeks later, they had not previously filled them in and had not even seen them before.
• The Will Change: The minor alteration they requested (my partner had reverted to her maiden name) could have been handled via a simple codicil or basic rewrite. It was not even strictly necessary. A standard high-street solicitor would have charged around £100.
• The Property Trust: The consultant took two card payments of £2945 (£5890) on a general "Terms of Business" intake sheet, leaving no specific trust paperwork behind. This left my in-laws confused about what they had paid for. Upon looking into it, charging a fee of this size heavily implies an immediate, lifetime "Living Trust" scheme - a strategy that carries massive financial risk, as local authorities routinely challenge lifetime property transfers as a deliberate deprivation of assets. By contrast, a legitimate, highly secure Will-Based Property Trust can be set up by a fully SRA-regulated solicitor for closer to £900. Even if the consultant was planning to set up this latter option – and we cannot be certain - it was over-priced by around £5000.
The business states on its website that it works with SRA-regulated solicitors to execute complex trust legal work. In our opinion, this means you are effectively paying an unregulated and unqualified intermediary a huge “handling fee” to broker a service you could easily buy directly from a qualified solicitor for a fraction of the price.
On a personal level, we felt the verbal sales tactics used in my in-laws' home relied heavily on high-pressure asset-loss fears to justify an exorbitant fee. In our view, these actions amounted to predatory selling practices targeting vulnerable seniors.
No paperwork was left apart from a generic “Terms of Business” and a car machine receipt – there was no breakdown of the fees charged and no copies of anything that had been signed. We believe this is a breach of consumer transparency laws under the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008.
Fortunately, we stepped in immediately and enforced their statutory right to cancel within the 14-day cooling-off window. The consultant claimed he was within his rights to charge "admin fees." While he did not actually do so, this interaction confirmed to us that my in-laws had been led to sign a waiver that compromised their automatic rights under the 14-day cooling-off period—a detail that was not made clear to them at the time of signing.
The “firm” did comply with the law and refunded the £5890 and returned the LPA cheque in full although this was not within the 14 days we specified in our initial request, and it took some effort.
You may be wondering why he has so many positive reviews – there are several reasons – firstly, the reviews are mainly found on Trustindex. This is a platform which allows him to funnel these reviews onto his website while filtering out any negative ones. Secondly The Will Partners main customer group is an older demographic who are less likely to leave online reviews. Thirdly, families who step in – as we have done – may be so relieved to have saved the day that they do not follow it up. Lastly, people have an inflated idea of legal costs due to films and TV dramas.
In summary, I strongly advise any families with vulnerable or elderly relatives to thoroughly review the options independently and to instruct a fully qualified, SRA-regulated solicitor directly instead.