Online Will vs Solicitor

Solicitor fees for a simple will commonly start from around £150 and rise significantly for more involved instructions, mirror wills, or trust structures. This reflects the solicitor's time in taking instructions, drafting, and arranging a signing appointment, which is reasonable for the service provided but can feel disproportionate for a genuinely simple set of wishes.

An online guided service is generally a fraction of this cost. My Posh Will charges £69 for a single will or £89 for mirror wills as a couple, a one-off payment that includes lifetime access to edit and re-download the document, so updating your will later does not mean paying again from scratch.

Completing a straightforward will online typically takes around ten minutes, because the process asks focused questions and you are in control of the pace throughout, without needing to schedule anything around someone else's diary.

Using a solicitor for the same straightforward will usually takes longer in calendar time, commonly two to four weeks from initial enquiry to a signed document, due to appointment scheduling, drafting turnaround, and a further appointment to sign. The drafting itself may not take long, but the process around it does.

A solicitor's real value shows up when your situation is not straightforward: inheritance tax planning for larger estates, trusts for a disabled beneficiary or to protect assets for children of a previous relationship, a business or agricultural property, assets held overseas, or a family situation where a dispute over your will seems likely.

In these cases, a solicitor applies individual judgment to your specific facts, something a standard guided template, however well designed, is not built to do. The cost of professional advice here is a reasonable price for reducing serious risk, not an unnecessary expense.

For a straightforward estate, an online guided will gives you a properly structured document covering executors, guardians, specific gifts and residue, together with clear instructions for signing and witnessing, all without the time and cost of solicitor appointments.

It also offers ongoing flexibility: because updates are included for life with My Posh Will, you can revisit your will whenever your circumstances change, such as a new child, a change of address for a beneficiary, or a new executor, without needing to commission an entirely new document each time.

A useful test is to ask whether your estate involves anything beyond straightforward gifts to family, friends or charities, using a normal age-related trust for children if needed. If the answer is no, an online guided will is a sound, cost-effective, and considerably faster choice.

If the answer is yes, or you are genuinely unsure, it is worth speaking to a solicitor, or starting the guided process and paying attention to any point where it suggests individual advice is needed. My Posh Will is designed to flag this rather than push everyone through the same standard document regardless of complexity.