What 'qualified' actually means in Will-writing

Will-writing in England and Wales is not a regulated activity. Anyone can do it: no exam, no licence, no oversight. In that landscape, the single most useful question a client - or a referring adviser - can ask is: what qualification does the person advising me hold?

The professional standard

STEP - the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners - is the recognised professional standard in estate planning. Full members (TEPs) are internationally recognised specialists with proven qualifications and experience; STEP Associates have passed rigorous examinations on Wills, trusts and estate administration. Fewer than 1 in 5 UK Will-writers hold a professional-standard qualification of this kind.

What qualification is not

Membership of an industry body is worthwhile - codes of practice, insurance requirements - but it is not a qualification. Nor is being a solicitor, by itself, a Wills specialism: estate planning is a discipline, and a general practitioner has not necessarily trained in it. And a confident salesperson is not a qualification of any kind - though across much of the sector, the person in front of you is exactly that: advice-led planning by a qualified specialist and a sales conversation with a script are different products that happen to end in the same document.

Why it matters in practice

The failures we find in Will reviews are rarely typos. They are specialist failures: ownership structures nobody checked, class gifts that disinherit stepchildren, reliefs wasted by old clause wording, trusts that cannot operate. Spotting them requires training; preventing them requires it at the drafting stage.

The questions to ask

What estate planning qualification do you hold? Who actually drafts my Will, and what do they check beyond the document? Are your calls recorded? Is your pricing published? A qualified specialist answers all four without blinking. Every Kinherit plan is built by a STEP-qualified estate planner - and our answers to the other three are yes, yes and yes.

Key takeaways

• Will-writing is unregulated; qualification is the reliable filter
• STEP is the professional standard; fewer than 1 in 5 Will-writers meet it
• Advice-led and sales-led Will-writing are different products

For advisers: your referral partner's qualification is evidence in your own file. For families: just ask the question.