When there's a will there's also a bill: Appointing a friend as an executor can spare a family pain and cost, writes Neasa MacErlean

SOLICITORS and banks should be appointed as executors of a will only if there is no other option, according to the latest issue of Which? magazine.

A Which? report on wills this month concludes that appointing a bank or solicitor as executor of your will could lead to years of argument and cost thousands of pounds.

The report highlights excessive fees, delays stretching to five years, incompetence and failure to inform beneficiaries of critical parts of the will. Barclays Bank is cited as charging over pounds 5,000 to close six bank accounts, wind up a pension and distribute the money between three people. The Midland is said to have overpaid pounds 50,000 in inheritance tax in one case, a mistake it realised only when the beneficiary pointed it out. Another beneficiary is still waiting for the solicitor-executors to sort out a will five years after the testator died.

Comparing costs, Which? calculates that on an estate worth pounds 139,000, the four main banks could each charge over pounds 4,500. Midland was cheapest at pounds 4,629, followed by Lloyds at pounds 5,776, Barclays at pounds 6,072 and NatWest at pounds 6,497. A solicitor would charge about pounds 1,750.

The underlying problem is that the true client cannot control the executors because the true client is dead.

The Solicitors Complaints Bureau, for example, is geared up to deal mainly with clients. It will look into general complaints about poor-quality services, but it cannot investigate specific allegations about executorship.

To remove an executor for mishandling an estate or for negligent investment, a beneficiary will have to go to court.

Which? recommends that people appoint lay executors - friends or relatives - when they write their will. The lay executors can still use solicitors or other professional executors to perform the work, but if they make mistakes or charge too much, they can be sacked.

Allan Cook did not know he had been appointed co-executor with the solicitor when his father died two years ago.

Without consulting Mr Cook, the solicitor borrowed a key from a neighbour, visited the dead man's house and took away all the documents which he thought would be of relevance. When Mr Cook tried to find out which documents the solicitor had taken, he was told that no list had been made.

It was at this stage that Mr Cook discovered the solicitor was planning to charge pounds 5,000 to act as executor. 'My father would have lost his head if he had known,' he said.

He persuaded the law firm to stand down, but they would not hand back the documents until he paid the pounds 1,100 initial fee.

That was not all. A non-believer, his father stated in his will that he did not want a funeral and only such ceremony as the trustees deemed appropriate. Mr Cook planned a non- religious occasion with 'some piano music and a reading of something funny which he would have liked'. The solicitors said there could be 'no music and no speech because these things constituted ceremony'.

Mr Cook is now pursuing matters with the Legal Services Ombudsman.

(Photograph omitted)