Professional Will Writers Association
PWWA Objectives
We are committed to promoting the regulation of the Will Writing profession across Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. By upholding the highest standards and addressing unethical practices highlighted in the media, we aim to ensure transparency, professionalism, and public trust in this vital service.
PWWA Benefits
- Offer a home-visit service by appointment, often in the evening if that is more convenient to their client
- Offer either a fixed fee or free service
- Offer secure storage arrangements for documents
- Offer advice and documentation on matters associated with Wills such as Enduring Powers of Attorney for property and financial affairs
Case Study
On Monday 9 December 2024 BBC News reported that many elderly and vulnerable people in south-east England lost control of their money and property after dealing with a law firm based in Essex.
They described how they were persuaded – and sometimes felt under pressure – to grant lasting power of attorney (LPA) to a man called Ron Hiller, a partner in the firm.
LPA is a legal agreement in which someone appoints an “attorney” to make decisions on their behalf, either for finance or health and welfare.
Attorneys are supposed to act in their clients’ best interests. But we investigated 30 cases involving Mr Hiller and his firm, Craybeck Law, and found a disturbing pattern of events:
People found they had no access to their bank accounts and no idea how much Mr Hiller was charging for being their attorney
Large amounts of cash were withdrawn without a reasonable explanation
Properties were sold for what owners and others considered was lower than market value, and possessions were cleared and disposed of without owners’ knowledge or informed consent
There has been a massive rise in LPAs in England and Wales in recent years. In 2023, more than one million people registered – a rise of 37% on the year before.
BBC News spoke to dozens of vulnerable people, as well as their friends, family and neighbours, who expressed concern about Ron Hiller’s business practices.
It raised concerns about the potential lack of oversight within the system, and whether the body that regulates attorneys in England – the Office of the Public Guardian (OPG) – is able to deal with such problems.
A spokesperson for Craybeck Law has denied any wrongdoing but said the firm could not respond to claims about specific individuals, because of client confidentiality.
BBC News made repeated attempts to speak to Mr Hiller in person, including at his home, but he did not respond.
Carole was in her 60s, living alone in a house in Uxbridge, west London. In April 2022 she was admitted to hospital with an infection. She never came back.
Her friends and neighbours, Bert and Hazel, wanted to visit her in hospital but Covid restrictions were in place. Then the hospital told them she had been transferred to a care home.
They rang the home repeatedly but were never put through. They left messages but their calls were not returned.
Within months, Carole’s house had been completely cleared out and sold for £355,000 – a low price, the neighbours thought, considering other houses in the street were fetching up to half a million.
Hazel and Bert were worried about what was happening, but they had no legal right to know any more detail.
So, they paid a visit to Carole’s care home in the Hertfordshire town of Rickmansworth.
Carole told them she was desperate to leave, but was stuck there. She said she had been introduced to Ron Hiller at the care home, and he had convinced her to grant him lasting power of attorney over her finances.
Most people appoint family members to be their attorney but for Carole, this had not been an option. Her closest relative was Sandie – however, she lived about a 100-mile drive away and suffered from serious health problems.
A property and finance LPA can be activated as soon as it is registered. Carole said she had been in a lot of pain when she arrived at the care home, and her LPA shows she agreed to grant these powers to Mr Hiller straight away.
Since that point, she had been without her bank cards and had received no statements. She was also in the dark about how much she was paying Mr Hiller to manage her finances.
She had wanted to call Hazel and Bert, but Mr Hiller had given her a new phone that didn’t contain any of her old contacts.
Carole said he had advised her to sell her house in order to pay the care home fees, then later told her it had fetched a low price because nobody had wanted to buy in her area.
As they sat talking, Sandie looked at her phone and discovered the house was on the market again. This time, the asking price was almost £100,000 more than when Mr Hiller had sold it for Carole.
After meeting Carole in the care home, Sandie asked for detailed accounts from Craybeck Law.
What came was a slow drip-feed of bank statements, with no real explanation of Mr Hiller’s charges and hardly any receipts.
However, they did show that large sums of money had been taken from Carole’s account. Her bank card had been used to make a series of £300 cash withdrawals from ATMs in the Essex town of South Benfleet, near Mr Hiller’s office.
He told Sandie that Carole had authorised the withdrawals – but later, when Carole asked to see invoices, they were not produced.
The statements also showed a charge for arranging for Carole’s house to be cleared. She later discovered the work was given to Silverback Commerical Removals, and that the director of this firm was David James Hiller – the son of Ron Hiller.
Craybeck Law denied there was any conflict of interest and said the decision to use Silverback was reached after quotes were sought from alternative providers. Carole has no record of these.
They heard a similar story about house sales a few miles away in Watford.
Ron Hiller was appointed to oversee the finances of an elderly woman called Elizabeth – her house had been sold for £350,000 after she went to live in a care home.
It was then left empty and sold on a few months later for £525,000 – without any signs that improvements had taken place.
Craybeck Law said it would not comment on individual cases but told BBC News that the properties it handled were often in poor condition and that sometimes they needed to be sold quickly to cover care home fees, and “to avoid the risk of a sale falling through”.
Many of the people they spoke to, felt Ron Hiller had put them under pressure to appoint him as attorney. Some also said they had been introduced to him by care professionals, who had led them to believe he was a qualified solicitor.
On the website for Craybeck Law, Ron Hiller is described as a partner in the firm’s elder client division. However, the letters after his name – MCICM – denote a diploma in credit management and debt collection.
There is no mention of Ron Hiller on the official register of qualified solicitors either.
A spokesperson for Craybeck Law denied Mr Hiller had ever given the impression he was a qualified solicitor. They added that changes to the law in 2008 meant that individuals who were not qualified solicitors were permitted to become partners in law firms.
Craybeck Law said that when a potential client was introduced to the firm, a qualified individual – usually a social worker – would have a discussion with that person, to ensure they had the mental capacity to make the decision to appoint the firm as their attorney.
In several the cases, Craybeck Law – and chiefly Ron Hiller – not only acted as attorney but also executor of clients’ wills.
An executor is legally responsible for carrying out the instructions in a person’s will and handling their estate.
However, in at least two cases, Mr Hiller seems to have ignored the instructions he was given. One client was surprised to hear that the will he had drawn up for her split her estate between four charities – including one she had never heard of.
Another client said he had not seen a copy of a will Mr Hiller had drawn up for him, and did not understand its contents.
Carole has now moved out of the care home in Rickmansworth, and into a small flat in Folkestone near her cousin Sandy.
She has the added work and expense of buying all the basics for her new home, because Ron Hiller disposed of all her furniture and most of her possessions.
However, she is happy to be making a fresh start.
The Office of the Public Guardian doesn’t appear to track when an attorney has an unusually large number of clients. A former senior judge, Denzil Lush, is concerned that the OPG is not designed to spot potential problems with the system.
For instance, if an attorney’s powers are revoked by more than one of their clients, the OPG does not automatically look at why this is happening.
The issue has caught the attention of Parliament – a private members bill, which has gone to its second reading, proposes greater safeguards.
Many MPs feel it is an urgent problem because of the sheer numbers involved. More than eight million people in England and Wales have now registered an attorney to act for them.
The system was designed to protect elderly and vulnerable people, but the danger is that without better safeguards, it could be leaving them open to harm.
Conclusion
Rules regarding Powers of Attorney differ across the United Kingdom and in the Republic of Ireland.
For example, Scotland has Continuing Powers of Attorney, England and Wales retain Lasting Powers of Attorney while both jurisdictions on the island of Ireland prefer Enduring Powers of Attorney which do not include medical decisions over health and wellbeing concerns.
Hence the Professional Will Writers Association for Ireland.
PWWA members deal almost exclusively within one area of law, that of succession planning and therefore are not general legal practitioners. As such they are best placed to offer the advice that best suits your own particular circumstances.
The PWWA philosophy is to ensure that our clients receive the very best level of service possible and that is at the heart of our proposition.
