In Agatha Christie plays there is often a scene where the family collects in the library to hear the last will and testament of the deceased, and the motives for theft or murder are revealed.

According to John Pears, an experienced probate partner with Nottingham law firm Warren & Allen, the reality is usually less dramatic.

'I have only seen it once in my career -- the family gathered in one place while I read them the contents of the will,' he says.But scenario aside, probate fraud by beneficiaries, outsiders preying on the family, or even solicitors preying themselves, is by no means confined to the realms of crime fiction.

During the past four years around 100 claims have been either paid or had money reserved to pay them by the Solicitors Indemnity Fund (SIF), in cases where solicitors or their employees have been dishonest with wills and probate.

The cost to the fund has been around £4.5 million.Barrie Mayne, head of the Law Society's fraud intervention office, says he investigates only a handful of cases a year, and most are not substantiated, but that if solicitors are determined to be dishonest with wills, they will find a way.

'Often where one beneficiary believes he has been treated unfairly by the solicitor, he accuses the solicitor of taking a backhander,' he says.There is less of a taboo in society these days about preying on the recently dead.

Mr Pears says: 'It is common for a house to be burgled during a funeral, when they know there will be nobody at home'.The most simple fraud by the family is little better than burglary.

After a person has died, but before the solicitor has been notified, members of the family visit the house and help themselves to the most valuable and moveable possessions.

'Jewellery is the most common,' Mr Pears says.

'The will might stipulate that a particular bracelet is to go to a favourite niece, but there is no sign of the bracelet.

I can't prove where it's gone.

It could have been lost before the death.'According to Andrew Nickels, head of risk improvement at the SIF, there have been a small number of cases where solicitors themselves have been accused of carrying out a simila r theft.

'A Victorian cameo brooch might have been left in the solicitor's safe.

If they have not kept careful records and if the beneficiary has no receipt, no-one can prove where it went,' says Mr Nickels.

Mr Pears says his firm and most others avoid this suspicion arising by insisting an independent solicitor is involved if there is a bequest to someone in the firm.Jo Goldby, a solicitor with City firm Theodore Goddard -- who wrote a dissertation on wills last year for a diploma in trusts and estate planning after several years experience with a previous firm -- says many frauds by clients may well go undetected.

Where a will has not been challenged, it is the responsibility of the Probate Registry which, unless there is anything to trigger alarm bells, assumes that all documents it is sent are valid.Where fraudulent wills are challenged later, they are often settled out of court with a compromise, because the Chancery Division -- satirised by Charles Dickens in Bleak House -- is still slow, overburdened, and expensive.

'It is galling for the genuine beneficiaries, who may feel they have no choice but to settle,' says Ms Goldby.Where solicitors have power of attorney over the client's affairs, there is also scope to 'milk' the accounts.

Mr Nickels says: 'The temptation is there because they know the client is not going to walk in suddenly and ask for the money.

The solicitor is usually caught only after the client dies, and the money is found to be missing'.

Invariably the solicitor claims he had been intending to put the money back and it had only been a loan.A flagrant example of a solicitor borrowing from the assets of an estate came to court in April this year when Michael Palmer was jailed for three years at the Old Bailey.

His Mayfair firm, Palmer Cowan, had been in financial difficulties and he defrauded £250,000 from the children of an oil company executive and his wife who had died almost simultaneously; and £100,000 from the estate of a wealthy friend whose will he was executing.

He had admitted 17 charges between 1992 and 1996, described in court as 'protracted dishonesty with sophisticated methods used to disguise what was going on'.

In one example, he had lent money from the estate to Dodi Fayed.

It had been repaid, but Mr Palmer had pocketed the interest.Self-made wills, where no solicitor has been present, give enormous scope for undetectable fraud.

'If somebody comes in with a signed and witnessed will, there is a limit to how much you can check,' Mr Pears says.

'Yet unless one of the witnesses was a doctor, nobody has had to certify that the person making the will was mentally capable.'Mr Pears says there is often pressure on a solicitor to approve a new will, when there might have been duress on an old person.

Sometimes a 'friend' brings an old person into the solicitor's office saying they want to change their will to leave their money to the friend.

'I always make a point of asking to see the person on his or her own, to ask what they really want to do,' says Mr Pears.There will be cases where the 'friend' is a valued client of the solicitor.

'In those circumstances the solicitor may find it hard to turn them down,' Mr Pears suggests.Relatives sometimes falsely claim to be next of kin in order to inherit.

'People swear almost on oath that they are the nearest relative.

Then another closer member of the family emerges,' says Mr Pears.

'Sailing close to the wind is very near to lying.'The increasing complexity of family relationships -- for example, stepchildren, divorce and children born outsi de marriage -- have made it harder to detect this sort of fraud by families.

The majority of honest solicitors is pained by probate fraud, particularly the high-profile cases which hit the headlines, such as Graham Durnford Ford, sentenced to four years in prison in 1996 for stealing £5 million.

His ten-office firm had to close.But Peter Raymond, chairman of the Law Society's probate section, and a partner in Cripps Harries Hall in Crowborough, East Sussex, is able to draw some comfort for the solicitors' image even from that catastrophe.

'What other profession gives full indemnity to the client at no cost?' he asks.