Do I need a solicitor to make a will

What makes a will valid in England and Wales

Section 9 of the Wills Act 1837 sets four requirements and none of them mentions a solicitor. The will must be in writing and signed by the testator, or by someone else in the testator’s presence and at their direction. The signature must appear intended to give effect to the will. It must be made or acknowledged in front of 2 or more witnesses present at the same time, and each witness must then attest and sign, or acknowledge their own signature, in the testator’s presence. No form of attestation is necessary.

gov.uk adds that both witnesses must be over 18, that they and the testator must each have a clear view of the other signing, and that the 2 witnesses need not sign at the same moment.

Two traps sit behind the formalities. Section 15 makes a gift to a witness, or to a witness’s husband or wife, void so far as that person is concerned, while the rest of the will stands. And no will made by a person under 18 is valid in England and Wales, which is one point where the other two jurisdictions part company. The rules on who can sign as a witness are tighter for a will than for almost any other document.

Video witnessing was temporary. Section 9(2) covered wills made on or after 31 January 2020 and on or before 31 January 2024, so a video call now fails the physical presence test.

Will writing is not a reserved legal activity

The Legal Services Act 2007 lists 6 reserved legal activities, which are the exercise of a right of audience, the conduct of litigation, reserved instrument activities, probate activities, notarial activities and the administration of oaths. Drafting a will is not among them.

The Competition and Markets Authority states the consequence on gov.uk. In the UK anyone can write a will, because for will writing there are no restrictions in law on who can carry it out. A business can sell wills, employ regulated professionals and appear on the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s register while being unregulated itself. The marker the CMA points to is the green tick and the words SRA-regulated firm beside the name.

The same guide flags the add-ons. A professional executor appointment, will storage, update subscriptions and estate planning are not needed for a valid will. A professional executor’s fees come out of the estate, and an executor may not be able to step aside once they have started to act.

Unregulated will writers, the Legal Ombudsman and £2 million cover

The Legal Ombudsman can only help if the provider is regulated. Citizens Advice states that will-writing services are usually cheaper than a solicitor but most are not regulated, so where something goes wrong there is no legal complaint to make and no compensation to claim.

	SRA-regulated firm	Unregulated will writer
Service complaints	The firm’s own procedure, then the Legal Ombudsman	The trader’s own procedure, then any voluntary body it has joined
Minimum indemnity cover	£2 million per claim, £3 million for a recognised or licensed body	None set by law, though some self-regulatory bodies require £2 million
Compensation fund	SRA compensation fund	None
If the business closes	6 years of run-off cover on the policy in place at closure	Depends on the policy, where one exists

A will writing service bought online or away from the seller’s premises carries a 14-day cooling-off period with a full refund, and where the business never explained the right to cancel, the CMA says that period extends by up to a year.

A regulated provider has up to 8 weeks to respond before the complaint can be escalated, and the Legal Ombudsman says its initial checks are currently taking up to 12 weeks.

The 6 situations gov.uk says need advice

gov.uk states that you can write your own will, then names the circumstances in which it says to take advice, and those are the situations where a template stops holding.

• Sharing a property with someone who is not a husband, wife or civil partner
• Leaving money or property to a dependant who cannot care for themselves
• Several family members who may make a claim, such as a second spouse or children from another marriage
• A permanent home outside the UK
• Property overseas
• Owning a business

The third of those is a claim under the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975, open to a spouse, a cohabitant of at least 2 years, a child or anyone the deceased was maintaining, within 6 months of the grant of representation.

What a solicitor’s will costs, and the free routes

No government body prices a will, so the usable figures are the ones firms print themselves. Levi Solicitors, ranked on the Leeds list, and Gibson Kerr, on the Edinburgh list, both publish what they charge to draft one.

Firm and city	Work	Published price
Levi Solicitors, Leeds	Single will	From £350 plus VAT
Levi Solicitors, Leeds	Couple, wills on similar terms	From £500 plus VAT
Levi Solicitors, Leeds	Discretionary trust will, single	From £900 plus VAT
Gibson Kerr, Edinburgh	Simple will	£400 plus VAT
Gibson Kerr, Edinburgh	Mirror wills for a couple	£600 plus VAT

Four routes cost nothing or close to it. Citizens Advice lists Free Wills Month, which runs every March and October for people aged 55 or over, and Will Aid every November, where solicitors waive the fee for a donation to charity. Trade unions often run a free will service for members, and some legal expenses policies cover a solicitor preparing or checking one.

Storing a signed will, and changing one with a codicil

A will nobody can find does the same job as no will at all. Depositing one with HM Courts and Tribunals Service costs £24, a one-off charge, with the will sent by recorded delivery to the Newcastle District Probate Registry. Lodging takes around 2 weeks, and a lodgement certificate follows. In Northern Ireland the equivalent deposit in the Probate and Matrimonial Office costs £49.

gov.uk states that a will cannot be amended once it has been signed and witnessed, and that the only official alteration is a codicil, executed the same way as the will, with no limit on how many are made. Major changes are handled by a new will that revokes all previous wills and codicils, and by destroying the old one. The same page puts the review cycle at every 5 years and after any major life change.

Marriage is the change most people miss. Section 18 revokes an existing will on marriage unless the will shows it was made expecting marriage to a particular person, and section 18A treats a former spouse as having died on the date of dissolution or annulment, both as executor and as beneficiary.

The Law Commission’s Modernising Wills Law report of 16 May 2025 came with a draft Bill lowering the age to 16, abolishing revocation on marriage and allowing electronic wills. None of it is law.

Probate and confirmation fees the executor pays

The fee for the will is not the last one. Whoever administers the estate pays a court fee, set differently in each jurisdiction.

Jurisdiction	Grant applied for	Court fee	Detail
England and Wales	Grant of probate	£526 where the estate is over £5,000, nothing at £5,000 or less	Extra copies £2 each with the application, £16 each later, and the grant usually arrives within 12 weeks
Scotland	Confirmation, sheriff court form C1	No fee up to £50,000, £351 over £50,000 up to £250,000, £705 above that	A small estate is £36,000 or less, where the sheriff clerk helps a personal applicant and no fee is charged
Northern Ireland	Grant of probate, Probate Office	No fee up to £10,000, £326 above it	Plus an £81 personal application fee where the applicant applies without a solicitor

Northern Ireland is the one jurisdiction where applying without a solicitor costs more, because the £81 personal application fee is not charged when a firm applies.

Making a will in Scotland and Northern Ireland

A single UK-wide will pack is wrong in two jurisdictions out of three. The statute, the age, the witnesses and the effect of marriage all move.

	England and Wales	Scotland	Northern Ireland
Governing statute	Wills Act 1837	Requirements of Writing (Scotland) Act 1995	Wills and Administration Proceedings (NI) Order 1994
Minimum age	18	12	18, or younger if married or in a civil partnership
Witnesses for validity	2, present at the same time	None, subscription alone is enough	2, present at the same time
Signature on every sheet	Not required	Required on a will of more than one sheet for the presumption	Not required
Marriage	Revokes the will	No effect	Revokes the will
Forced share	None, claims run under the 1975 Act	Legal rights over the moveable estate	None, claims run under the 1979 Order

Scotland. A will is formally valid once the granter subscribes it. The single witness is about proof, since section 3 raises a presumption of subscription where one witness signs and the document or its testing clause gives that witness’s name and address. Legal rights are the decisive difference. Calculated out of the net moveable estate, meaning everything except land and buildings, they give a surviving spouse or civil partner one third where there are children and one half where there are none, with children taking one third between them where a spouse survives and one half where none does. The promise that you can leave everything to whoever you like is untrue north of the border. Divorce or dissolution treats the former spouse as having predeceased, except for a guardianship appointment. Citizens Advice Scotland states that will templates and will-writing services are not regulated by the Law Society of Scotland, the regulator for solicitors there, with service complaints going to the Scottish Legal Complaints Commission.

Northern Ireland. The 1994 Order displaced section 9 of the Wills Act 1837, so the formalities live in Article 5 even though they read almost identically. Article 4 adds the exception England and Wales does not have, that a will made under 18 stands where the testator is or has been a spouse or civil partner, and Article 8 voids a gift to a witness or to the witness’s spouse or civil partner. nidirect states that all three people must be present together at the signing and that a video recording is not a valid legal will. Family provision claims run under the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) (Northern Ireland) Order 1979 rather than the 1975 Act, and the regulator, which also handles complaints, is the Law Society of Northern Ireland.