The honest answers.

HM Courts and Tribunals Service charges a one-off £24 to deposit a will. There is no annual charge and no renewal.

Custodian charges the estate planner a one-off £79 for that will. That covers the £24 HMCTS fee, the execution check, the client pack, recorded postage and all the administration. The estate planner decides what to charge the client.

No. It is a one-off for that will, and nothing recurs. If the client later makes a replacement will, that new will needs its own £24 deposit and fresh admin, so it is charged again.

Custodian Plus, at £19 a year per will, is separate and entirely optional.

Mirror wills are two testators and two separate deposits, so HM Courts and Tribunals Service charges £24 for each — £48 for the pair.

Submitted together, Custodian charges the estate planner £139 for the two rather than £158, because it is one package and one client conversation. Custodian Plus for a household is £29 a year covering both wills rather than £38, since the annual review email goes to one address.

All Custodian prices exclude VAT.

No. Every Custodian price quoted on this site excludes VAT. The £24 within the £79 is the HM Courts and Tribunals Service deposit fee.

Yes. Anyone can deposit a will with HMCTS for £24. What Custodian adds is the execution check before it goes, the scan and case record against the client, the certificate pack sent to the client, and the administration — and, on Plus, the withdrawal management and duplicate protection that stop two of your client's wills ending up in storage at once.

If a case does not need any of that, the £24 route is a perfectly reasonable thing to tell a client about.

The testator applies to withdraw it using form PA7A. It is free, and it takes around four weeks.

On Custodian Plus we handle the withdrawal. On the base product the client's instruction sheet explains how to do it, which is deliberate: base-tier clients do not get the annual email, so they are the ones most likely to make a second will years later and leave a duplicate behind.

Withdraw the old one first, then lodge the new one. Never leave two of a client's wills in deposit — that is precisely the situation that turns into a contested estate.

Plan for the four weeks. The sequence is: the new will is signed first, which revokes the old one; the old will is then withdrawn from HMCTS and the new one lodged. Custodian Plus manages that for you.

The executor applies to HM Courts and Tribunals Service for the will to be released, quoting the deposit reference from the certificate.

That is why the certificate and the executor card matter so much, and why the executor card is not optional in the pack: they are what tells the executor the will exists at all, and where to go for it.

No. The HM Courts and Tribunals Service will deposit service covers England and Wales. A testator in Scotland or Northern Ireland needs a different route — tell us about the case and we will point you at it.

No. Custodian is operated by Project Will Ltd. We deposit wills with HMCTS as any professional or member of the public may. HMCTS does not endorse, approve, accredit or partner with Custodian, and we would not claim otherwise.

No. We check execution — signature, date, witnessing, attestation and page integrity. The full checklist is here. The drafting is your professional responsibility, and Custodian is not a law firm and does not give legal advice.

Nothing is lodged. The will comes back to you — not to your client — with a written note of what we found and what would put it right.

The fee is held against the resubmission rather than refunded. Send the corrected will back and we lodge it under the same case at no further charge. The HMCTS fee has not been spent, because nothing was submitted.

Yes. Age is not a problem — the check and the deposit work exactly the same on a will signed in 2007 as on one signed last week. Older wills are in fact where the check earns its keep, because execution standards varied and the witnesses are harder to trace later.

The HM Courts and Tribunals Service deposit service covers England and Wales only, so Custodian cannot lodge the will. Tell us about the case and we will point you at the right route rather than leaving you to find it. We would still rather check the signing and witnessing for you, and we will say so if something looks wrong.

Ask your client to sign two originals wherever the case allows it, and send us one. Everything travels by tracked or recorded delivery in both directions, and we confirm arrival the day a will lands. If a will does go missing in transit before we receive it, nothing has been charged and the client re-executes — which is why the second original is worth the extra five minutes at signing.

To us, as the party that lodged the will under your client's written authority. We log it against the case in WILLO and send the original on to your client to keep, with the executor card and the withdrawal instruction sheet. You see the reference on the client record.

Yes, always. The will is theirs and it is deposited in their name. They apply directly to HM Courts and Tribunals Service on form PA7A, free of charge, and they do not need our permission or involvement. We would rather they told you first so a replacement is handled properly — but nothing about Custodian locks a will in.

The deposit is unaffected — HMCTS holds the will against the reference, not the address. Tell us anyway so the record stays accurate, and so a Custodian Plus review email does not go to a dead address. A move is usually also worth a conversation about whether the will still does what they want.

No. In full: we will not contact your clients for any purpose other than the annual Plus email and executor enquiries. We will not market our own services to them. Any work identified during an annual review is passed back to you. We only take a case over if you have ceased trading or have asked us to.

That undertaking is set out on the partner page, not buried in terms.

A sale is not a cessation. Custodian Plus transfers to the buyer along with the client relationship, and we will not step in or contact the clients unless the buyer asks us to. Tell us who has taken over and we will update the records. Our undertaking not to approach your clients applies to the buyer exactly as it applied to you.

The £79 is invoiced monthly in arrears for the cases lodged that month, and Plus is billed as a single monthly aggregate across all your Plus wills rather than as separate annual invoices. If Plus lapses there is a 60-day grace period, after which we write to the client with the will's location and the free withdrawal route, copying you. Full billing terms.

No minimum volume, nothing to pay to set up, and no tie-in. Put a single case through and see how it goes.

Whatever you decide. £79 for a single will, or £139 for two mirror wills submitted together, is what Custodian charges you — excluding VAT. The retail price is yours to set. For context, several providers charge in the region of £750 for lifetime storage of a will.