The battle of the wills

Lawyers and the Public Trust square off over wills.

Sunday, October 29th 2000, 10:34PM

A spat between lawyers and the Public Trust Office over will drafting services has now spilled over into newspapers and law firm newsletters.

However, lawyers are denying that they are trying to protect their patch, saying rather that they believe some of the information contained in Public Trust advertisements is incorrect.

The nationally-circulated "Fineprint" newsletter published on behalf of the country's 50 NZ Law Limited law firms says lawyers are "infuriated" by the Public Trust's advertising campaign, which claims the Trust prepares wills for free.

"The Trust compares itself with lawyers and says that "lawyers charge $100-$150 for the average will, although that can run to thousands of dollars for complex documents." This statement has infuriated many lawyers who believe that the Public Trust is making misleading statements. Generally speaking, lawyers charge a nominal fee for a simple will. More complex wills of course will cost a little more," says the newsletter.

Errol Macdonald of Levin law firm Cullinane Steels says a statement by Deputy Prime Minister Jim Anderton that lawyers charged several hundred dollars for preparing wills was "blatantly incorrect" and was based on information from the Public Trust.

Macdonald wrote a letter to the editor of The Dominion, which drew responses from as far away as Tauranga.

"I was concerned that misleading information appeared to have come from the Public Trust Office. I'm not too concerned about the Public Trust taking wills away from private lawyers because that's their recognised function and it's totally fair enough. I'm also not concerned because they seem to have their difficulties with the public from time to time. We have people switching to us form the Public Trust," he says.

"I personally think there are advantages to doing your will with a private law firm as opposed to the Public Trust. There is a strong tendency in nearly all cases with a Public Trust will to have the Public Trust as your trustee, whereas with a private will the lawyer would be trying to make a family member a trustee. The second issue is costs. When lawyers administer an estate they charge a fee for the legal work they do, but as far as we can ascertain the Public Trust not only does that, but also charges a scale of commission on the value of your estate and any income coming off it."

Macdonald says lawyers will generally charge $50 plus GST for preparing two simple wills for a couple.

"Quite often if the lawyer does other legal work, there will be no charge.

The accusation we are charging hundreds of dollars is simply incorrect."

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