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Will searches and other queries
Following queries from practitioners on wills, the Probate, Administration & Trusts Committee offers the following suggestions you might find helpful.
- If instructed in an intestacy situation, where the family are quite sure that the deceased never made a will, the solicitor may proceed or for certainty may place a notice in the Gazette.
- Where the family believe the deceased may have made a will with either a particular solicitor or with a solicitor in a local area, do contact that solicitor or those solicitors in that local area.
- Solicitors should keep their wills index up to date and check their wills index against the notices in the Gazette on receipt of same and if they hold a will to contact their colleague who placed the notice. The recent Judgment In the matter of the estate of Patrick otherwise Paddy Quinn…” [2024] IEHC 670 refers.
- As a matter of professional courtesy, practitioners should check their wills index and respond to a query from a colleague or their Bar Association, where the deceased resided in the area and may have made a will with them. The usual practice is that they would only respond if they held a will.
- Practitioners are under no obligation to respond to such requests from any other agency or party acting on behalf of another party or to irrelevant requests where the deceased had no link to the solicitor or to the area.
