User:Willwriting/sandbox

Throughout the English speaking world the estate of every person who dies is distributed (following a court procedure known as 'probate') in the manner set out in the deceased´s Last Will and Testament (LWAT) document. To be valid this must have been signed by the deceased in front of two witnesses who themselves have signed in the sight of the testator and the other witness. In the event of their being no LWAT found then the estate is distributed under the rules of intestacy. Until the late 1980s, will writing was the sole province of solicitors, who were the only people who had access to training for the skills required, and so they effectively retained the activity within their own regulated environment. That effective monopoly of solicitors was ended in the late 1987s, when Simon Harris founded the Quill Group, a non-solicitor will-writing franchise, following one year of him piloting the Quill Wills service. Quill provided training to its franchisees. By 1992 there were more than 400 franchisees of Quill Testamentary Services Ltd and a new ‘willwriting industry’ had been born.