A woman dies having made a careful will eleven years earlier. Her family search the house, find a copy with a note referring to an original held somewhere, and cannot establish which firm prepared it.
The document exists. It took an afternoon to write and it may take months to find, and in the meantime nothing can proceed.
The checklist
Publish these and the document is where it needs to be.
1. Where the original is held
By the firm, in a storage service or by the client. Stated at the point of signing and recorded somewhere the family can reach.
2. Whether storage is included
Or charged, as a one off or annually. Clients need to know before they decide where to keep it.
3. Why the original matters
That a copy is not the same thing and what difficulties arise without the original. Clients keep the copy and assume it is enough.
4. The risks of keeping it at home
Fire, flood, loss, being thrown out with paperwork and simply not being found. Said plainly rather than as a sales point for a storage service.
5. Who should be told where it is
Executors, a spouse and ideally one other person. A perfectly stored will that nobody knows about has the same problem as a lost one.
6. What the client should keep themselves
A copy, a note of where the original is and the firm's details. A single card in a wallet or with important papers solves most of this.
7. How the family retrieves it
Who can request it, what evidence is needed and how long it takes. Families need this at the worst possible moment and should not be working it out then.
8. What happens if the firm changes hands
Merges, closes or is acquired, and how stored documents follow. It is a real question over the decades a will exists.
9. Whether the client can retrieve it
To review, to amend or to take away, and whether it can be returned. Clients worry about losing control of their own document.
10. What happens to stored documents over time
Whether there is a review, whether clients are contacted and what happens if a client cannot be reached. It relates to the practical points in access hours and security questions for storage.
11. Whether related documents are stored together
Powers of attorney, property documents and anything else, which connects to property and home questions in estate planning.
12. Whether there is a national register
Whether the firm registers wills anywhere, what that achieves and whether the client should. It is a cheap safeguard many people have never heard of.
13. Remind clients periodically
A contact every few years confirming where it is and whether anything has changed, which is also the prompt for a review, as in guardianship questions from parents of young children.
14. Answer retrieval questions at any hour
Because families search at night, in distress, and a published route is what they need at that moment, which is the guided help in an AI shopping assistant for product fit applied to a far more serious search.
Getting started
Publish where documents are stored, what it costs, how families retrieve them and what happens if the firm changes, then answer at any hour. SpideyChat for law firms answers from your published pages. Try SpideyChat on your own site, or read about answers on the features page.