A £4.99 do-it-yourself will-making kit which can be purchased 'at the same time as the daily newspaper' went on sale in 7,000 newsagents this week.


Lawpack Publishing said its pack would mean making a will was now 'something that can be done on impulse'.



Lawpack marketing manager Matthew Fidge said the pack was a response to research carried out by the National Consumer Council suggesting that 64% of adults did not have a will. He said it had been designed to make the process of will-writing easier to understand, affordable and more accessible.



'It's not that solicitors make the process inaccessible, but their marketing simply does not reach the majority of people in the population who have not made wills,' he said.



'Most people do not need a solicitor to prepare their will because, providing there are no complicating factors, it's a fairly standard document. [But] we do not gloss over the fact that some people will require a solicitor and make it clear when legal advice should be sought.'



Adrian O'Loughlin, chairman of the Law Society's probate section, said: 'It can't be a bad thing to try to get more people testate, but I wonder whether people who could benefit from legal advice would be discouraged from obtaining it by using do-it-yourself packs. It's easy to tell someone the technical requirements for making a valid will, but it's of vital importance that testators receive proper legal advice in relation to all the wider issues involved.'



Catherine Baksi