Continuity
If you cease trading, Custodian takes the case over and handles future updates for the client at a reduced rate. Your client is not left holding a certificate and a firm that no longer answers.
Custodian Plus · £19 a year per will, £29 a household · ex VAT
Not a storage fee. Someone standing behind you.
The will is already lodged and already paid for. Plus buys four things the base product deliberately leaves out — and one of them is a scheduled, paid-for reason to speak to your client every year.
What the £19 buys.
Withdrawal management
When a will needs replacing, we handle the PA7A retrieval from HM Courts and Tribunals Service. Withdrawal is free and takes around four weeks, and we manage the sequence: the new will is signed first, which revokes the old one. We then withdraw the old will from HMCTS and lodge the new one, so there is never more than one will of your client’s in deposit.
Duplicate protection
We make sure the superseded will is withdrawn before a new one is lodged, so there is never more than one will of your client's in storage. Two wills in deposit is how estates end up contested.
Annual client contact
One email a year to the client asking whether anything has changed — a marriage, a death, a house, a new grandchild. Anything that comes out of it is routed straight back to you.
That last one is the real reason to sell it.
Most planners know they should be back in front of their clients annually, and almost nobody has a mechanism that makes it happen. Plus is that mechanism, and the client is paying for it.
The email goes out on schedule. If the client's circumstances have changed, the work comes back to you — a codicil, a new will, an LPA, a trust conversation. We do not do that work and we do not quote for it.
Any work identified during an annual review is passed back to you. We will not market our own services to your clients, and we only take a case over if you have ceased trading or have asked us to.
The margin, worked through.
Plus costs you £19 a year per will, or £29 a year for a household — both wills of a couple, since the annual review email goes to one address. A planner charging the client £35 a year keeps £16, and gets the annual contact for free.
| Per will, per year | Amount |
|---|---|
| Your retail price to the client (example) | £35.00 |
| Custodian Plus, charged to you | −£19.00 |
| You keep | £16.00 |
| A household instead — both wills of a couple | £29.00 |
| Scheduled annual client contact | Included |
£35 is an illustration, not a recommended retail price. You set your own. All Custodian prices exclude VAT.
And if Plus stops.
Whether the client cancels, the planner stops paying, or a firm winds down without telling anyone — the answer is the same, and it is deliberately reassuring.
The will is unaffected. It stays safely with HM Courts and Tribunals Service and can be withdrawn free of charge at any time. What ends is the ongoing support, not the deposit.
There is a 60-day grace period first. After that we write to the client with the will's location, the HMCTS reference, and how to withdraw it free using form PA7A — and we copy the planner on that letter. Nobody is left holding a certificate and a phone number that no longer answers.
If a planner sells their practice rather than closing it, that is not a cessation. Plus transfers to the buyer along with the client relationship, and we will not step in unless the buyer asks us to.
When it's worth adding, and when it isn't.
Plus is an optional extra on the cases that warrant it, not a recurring charge you have to defend on every file. That is deliberate.
- Worth itLarger estates, blended families, business owners, clients likely to change their will, and anyone whose circumstances are still moving.
- Probably notA simple estate, a settled couple in their eighties, or a client who would rather have one payment and no further contact.
Clients on the base product do not get the annual email. That is precisely why the base pack includes an instruction sheet telling them to withdraw the old will before making a new one.
Add Plus to the cases that need it.
Register your firm and choose whether Plus is offered to your clients. You can change that at any point.