Why probate professionals are perfectly placed to fix Britain's wills gap

Surveys of the UK public have suggested for years that a large share of adults — by many estimates around half — have no valid will. Probate professionals do not need the surveys. They see the consequences arrive in the post: intestacies that distribute estates in ways the deceased would never have chosen, wills written decades ago that ignore second marriages and estranged children, families discovering that a step-parent or an unmarried partner has been left with nothing the law will recognise.

Every practitioner has watched a family absorb, in real time, what a two-hour appointment years earlier would have prevented. The wills gap is usually discussed as a public-policy problem. From the probate desk, it looks like something else: a professional opportunity that arrives, fully formed, with almost every file you open.

Think about who you are actually dealing with during an estate administration. Executors and administrators are typically the adult children, siblings or partners of the deceased. Over weeks or months, they experience — not read about, experience — what estate planning does and does not achieve. They chase assets nobody catalogued. They watch intestacy rules override obvious intentions. They learn what a lasting power of attorney would have spared the family in the final years.

There is no moment in a person's life when the case for making a will and registering LPAs is more vivid than this one. Behaviour-change research and common sense agree: people act on risks they have just seen materialise. The executor who has spent six months untangling an intestate estate does not need persuading that wills matter. They need someone to make the next step easy.

What usually happens instead? Nothing. The estate concludes, the family disperses, the resolve to sort our own affairs out fades into the general backlog of life. And when someone in the family does eventually act, they act alone — into a will-writing market that is, in England and Wales, largely unregulated. Whoever advertises most confidently wins the instruction, regardless of quality.

The professional who guided the family through probate is the person they already trust on exactly this subject. An introduction from you to a vetted, regulated specialist is worth more to that family than any amount of advertising — and it protects them from the corners of the market you would not send anyone to. Leaving them to find their own way is not neutrality. It is a service left unfinished.

The obvious objection is the right one: these are bereaved people, and nobody should be sold to across a probate desk. That objection is precisely why the mechanics matter.

SmartPeer's process is built so that the introduction never becomes a pitch:

• The client opts in online, in their own time — not under any pressure in a meeting, and not while signing other paperwork.
• Every referral is consent-based and evidenced; nothing happens unless the client chooses it.
• An automatic disclosure letter tells the client exactly what the arrangement is.
• SmartPeer never contacts your client except through the referral they consented to.

Your role is simply to mention, at a natural point, that help with wills and LPAs is available through people you trust, and to leave the decision entirely with the family. Most practitioners find that framing sits comfortably alongside their professional obligations — because it is genuinely in the client's interest.

The service case and the commercial case point the same way. Helping the families you act for close their own wills gap completes the work you started; it also creates a recurring, legitimate income stream from work you are already doing.

• Free to join, no monthly fees — there is no cost to finding out whether this fits your practice.
• Members keep 60–70% of introducer fees on referrals that proceed.
• Live tracking and reconciling commission statements mean you always know where each referral stands and that the numbers add up.

Probate practitioners spend their careers repairing the damage the wills gap causes. Few professions are better placed to prevent it — one family at a time, with the family's consent, through specialists you would choose yourself. If that sounds like your kind of practice growth, SmartPeer would like to hear from you.