Terms of Service

Willful UK Ltd (“Willful”, “we”, “us”, “our”) is a company registered in England and Wales. We operate willful.uk, an online platform that helps you prepare a will, a Lasting Power of Attorney or a codicil through a guided interview, and arranges for the finished document to be reviewed and approved by an independent solicitor before you sign it.

Willful is a technology company, not a law firm. Willful UK Ltd is not authorised or regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA). Every document produced through Willful is reviewed and approved by an independent solicitor who is individually authorised and regulated by the SRA, whose name and SRA number appear on your review. Willful has applied to the SRA for authorisation as an Alternative Business Structure under the Legal Services Act 2007; we will update these terms when that authorisation is granted.

Willful provides:

• A guided, plain-English interview that collects your wishes and circumstances
• A draft will, LPA or codicil assembled from your answers using solicitor-approved clause templates, with the help of artificial intelligence
• Review and approval of that draft by an independent SRA-regulated solicitor, including the right for the solicitor to raise points, ask questions or decline to approve
• Signing instructions, a printed and posted copy where included in your price, and registration with the National Will Register where that service is available
• A secure vault for your important documents, a record of your funeral wishes, a digital estate map, and family access controls that let you share documents with people you choose
• Willful Care, an optional annual membership described in section 7

The interview and the artificial intelligence that assembles your draft collect and organise information. They do not advise you. The reviewing solicitor checks your document for legal validity, formal requirements and internal consistency, confirms it reflects the answers you gave, and may raise points for you to consider. Unless the solicitor expressly agrees otherwise in writing, the review does not include bespoke advice on estate planning strategy, tax planning, trusts, business succession or the law of any country other than England and Wales. If you need that advice, you should instruct a solicitor directly.

You agree to:

• Give complete and accurate answers in the interview, and tell us promptly if anything changes before your document is approved
• Read your approved document carefully before signing it and raise anything you do not understand with the reviewing solicitor through the platform
• Sign your will or codicil exactly as the signing instructions describe (see section 9), and register an LPA with the Office of the Public Guardian before it can be used
• Keep your account credentials confidential and tell us at once if you suspect unauthorised access
• Review your will after major life events such as marriage, civil partnership, divorce, the birth of a child, a move abroad or a significant change in your assets, any of which may affect it

To use Willful you must:

• Be at least 18 years old
• Be ordinarily resident in England or Wales, or otherwise want a will governed by the law of England and Wales
• Have testamentary capacity (see section 5)
• Verify your identity through our identity verification partner before your document is submitted for review

Willful does not currently prepare documents governed by the law of Scotland, Northern Ireland or any other jurisdiction. Where the interview identifies overseas assets, your document will say so and the reviewing solicitor will flag that local advice may be needed.

By completing the capacity confirmation step you confirm that, at the time you make your will, you understand the nature and effect of making a will, the extent of your property, and the claims to which you ought to give effect, and that you are acting of your own free will (the test in Banks v Goodfellow (1870) LR 5 QB 549). You may record a short capacity video; where you do, it is stored encrypted and made available to the reviewing solicitor.

If the reviewing solicitor has a concern about capacity or undue influence they may ask for more information, recommend a formal capacity assessment, or decline to approve your document. Where a document is declined for this reason you will receive a full refund.

Before a document can be submitted for review you must verify your identity using a photographic identity document and a live selfie, processed by Stripe Identity. We do this to comply with anti-money-laundering rules and the SRA requirements that apply to the reviewing solicitor, and to protect you against fraud. Our Privacy Policy explains how this data is handled.

Our fees are shown on the Pricing page before you begin, in pounds sterling and inclusive of VAT where it applies. The interview is free; you pay only when you submit a document for review. Payment is taken by Stripe. Promotional codes are applied at checkout, may be withdrawn at any time, and cannot be exchanged for cash.

Willful Care is an optional annual membership (currently £36 a year) that includes one reviewed codicil a year, reminders to review your will after life events, priority review turnaround and an annual printed copy of your estate file. It renews automatically each year unless you cancel from your Settings page before the renewal date. You may cancel at any time; cancellation stops future renewals and does not refund the current year, except as set out in section 8.

You have a legal right under the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 to cancel within 14 days of payment. Because you ask us to begin the solicitor review immediately when you submit, you acknowledge that once a solicitor has begun reviewing your document the service has started at your request and you will not be entitled to a refund on cancellation.

• Before a solicitor has been assigned and has begun review: cancel from your account or by emailing us, and we will refund you in full within 14 days
• After review has begun: no refund, except that if the reviewing solicitor cannot approve your document we will refund you in full
• Willful Care: a full refund if you cancel within 14 days of first joining and have not used a Care codicil in that time

Nothing in this section affects your statutory rights, including your rights under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 to a service performed with reasonable care and skill.

A will or codicil is only valid if it is executed in accordance with section 9 of the Wills Act 1837:

• Signed by you (or by someone else in your presence and at your direction)
• In the presence of two witnesses who are both present at the same time
• Each witness then signs, or acknowledges their signature, in your presence
• Neither witness, nor the spouse or civil partner of a witness, should be a beneficiary: a gift to them would fail

Willful provides clear signing instructions with every approved document, but we cannot supervise the signing. You are responsible for signing correctly, and an incorrectly executed will may be invalid. Do not staple, clip or pin anything to your signed will.

Where you have opted in and the service is available, we register the existence and location of your signed will with the National Will Register (operated by Certainty). Registration records that a will exists; it does not store the will itself and does not affect its validity. If we are unable to register your will we will tell you, and you may register it yourself.

You may invite people you trust to view your will, your funeral wishes and, depending on the access you grant, the documents in your vault. You are responsible for choosing who to invite and for the accuracy of their email addresses. You can withdraw access at any time from your Family page. Material you have chosen to release only after your death is released only once we have verified a death certificate.

The vault and digital estate map are provided for your convenience. Keep your signed original will in a safe place: a scanned or stored copy is not a substitute for the original, which is what a probate registry will require.

You must not use Willful to prepare a document for anyone other than yourself, to upload unlawful or infringing material, to attempt to gain access to another user’s data, or to interfere with the platform’s security. We may suspend or close an account used in breach of these terms.

The wording of your will, LPA and codicil is yours to use freely. The platform, its clause templates, its software and its content are owned by Willful UK Ltd or its licensors and may not be copied or reused except as needed to use the service.

Nothing in these terms limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, for breach of your statutory rights as a consumer, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited.

Subject to that, our total liability to you for any claim arising from the service is limited to the greater of the fees you paid to us in the 12 months before the claim arose and £500. We are not liable for the choices you make about your estate, for a will that is invalid because it was not signed correctly, for changes in the law after your document is approved, or for loss caused by your not updating your will after a change in your circumstances.

The reviewing solicitor is separately responsible to you for the professional review they carry out, and holds professional indemnity insurance as the SRA requires.

If something has gone wrong, email complaints@willful.uk and we will acknowledge your complaint within two working days and respond within 14 days. If your complaint concerns the work of the reviewing solicitor, we will pass it to them and tell you how to raise it with them directly. Because the solicitor is an authorised person, you may be able to refer a complaint about their service to the Legal Ombudsman (legalombudsman.org.uk) if it is not resolved within eight weeks. You may also report a concern about any solicitor to the SRA at sra.org.uk.

We may update these terms from time to time. We will post the new version here with a new date and version number, and tell you by email about any change that materially affects your rights. The terms in force when you pay for a document are the terms that apply to that document.

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales. Disputes are subject to the jurisdiction of the courts of England and Wales; if you live in Scotland or Northern Ireland you may also bring proceedings in your local courts.

Willful UK Ltd
Email: legal@willful.uk