STORESAFE is a service provided by ‘My Simple Will’ which ensures that the most important document that you will ever sign and put your name to is kept safe, secured and inaccessible to anyone else but you or your executors.
Where you store your will is crucial, it is essential that it is stored in a secure place. A place that you can guarantee no one with dubious intentions can access it. Only the original signed and attested will is a legally valid document. There are no substitutes.
The STORESAFE facility is tailor made to offer your documents protection from theft and both fire and water damage. We store your documents in purpose built chests, designed to protect paper documents. STORESAFE'S specialist units are a cost effective and perfectly equipped way to store your Will, as securely as is possible. STORESAFE is a high security storage facility with 24hr 365 day a year protection. In addition to this your documents are insured against loss.
When you store your Will with STORESAFE ‘My Simple Will’ also provide a regular monitoring service, whereby we contact you to review your personal circumstances and where applicable update your will to reflect those changes.
There are in excess of one million homes burgled every year and more than Sixty Thousand homes destroyed through fire; it makes perfectly good sense to store your will away from your home.
There are traditionally three ways in which most people would choose to store their wills, having had the good sense to write your will it only follows that you store it in as safe a place as you can find.
Storing your Will at home
Often people who keep their will at home hide it in a safe place….sometimes they are never found (which would mean you have died intestate accidently and your estate would then be dealt with according to the law and not your wishes).
If it is stored where it can be found it can be damaged, lost destroyed or even stolen.
Maybe you keep your will in a safe at home, for a security conscious generation this probably seems like a solution, however, if you keep other objects of monetary value in there by divulging the safe combination to a third party, you could invalidate your insurance.
Who would know the combination? It is possible that someone would have to pay a locksmith to break the safe in order to access your will, all of which takes time and costs money.
Also if you have had reason to update your will how would your family know that the document that they do find is indeed, your last will and testament?
Storing your will with a Solicitor
Some Solicitors offer to store a clients will, especially if they have appointed the Solicitor as sole executor of the will, thus allowing them to charge your family whatever they see fit to charge when handling probate .
Solicitors generally do not ask for the authority to contact family members to inform them that they are holding your will, which could lead to your family not knowing where to start looking for your will, this problem could be significantly worse if you wrote your will in one area and then moved somewhere else.
Storing your will at the Bank
If you chose your high street bank to prepare your will the situation is much the same as when you use a solicitor with similar pitfalls.
You can opt to pay to place your will in a bank safety deposit box, however, after your death; the person trying to open the box would have to obtain a court order to do so.
Banks will also allow you for a fee to place your will in their vault, they do not notify your executors that they have done so; they may not even keep it at your local branch. This could cause delays in sourcing and gaining access to your will after your death.
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