The practice of registering wills online is not one that is obligatory by law. Nevertheless it represents good practice and can act as an insurance against the possible loss of the will, or at least the situation where the will cannot be located after your death. You can register wills online at the National Will Register, a central repository of wills where legal experts can conduct a search if required.

We live in an online world and wills online are a natural result of that. You can create wills online, register wills online and of course search for wills online. However, it is still normal practice to have a will drawn up through a solicitor, who might then keep it safe for the day it is needed. Therein can lie the problem. If the rest of the family don’t know where the will is held after you die, no amount of searching through wills online will make it turn up!

That is why it is important to register wills online. Yes, you know where the document is and the solicitor also knows, but other people need to know too. If you die and no one besides the solicitor knows where the will is, he or she may not be aware of your demise and the need to produce the will.

Registering wills online can certainly change all that. If a search in the usual place fails to turn up a will your family can turn to the National Will Register and have a search carried out there. If yours is one of the many wills online registered there it will turn up with all the necessary information about where the physical document is located.

It may seem that writing a will and then registering it in a central location with other wills online is a duplication of effort and not really necessary. Consider the possible consequences of not registering wills online, however. If you die and no one knows where your will is kept, besides your solicitor, whom no one is familiar with, and who doesn’t know that your will is needed by the family, it is possible that your will would not be found in time. You would be declared to have died intestate, meaning that you left no will. The state would step in and distribute your estate as it saw fit.

Do you think that the state would distribute your possessions in exactly the way that you want them distributed? No. But by registering wills online everyone has the best chance of letting everyone who needs to know exactly where their will is kept. Registered wills online can then insure that no family member loses out, and that everyone gets what you want them to get.

It simply makes sense to register wills online. It’s quick and easy to do and free of charge as well. Even if everyone decided to store their wills under a mattress for safekeeping, registering wills online would at least let those who need to know where they can be found.