Good afternoon,
My firm was recently instructed to administer an estate and was provided with a Will, it has now transpired that the Will that was provided has been fraudulently made as the witnesses who signed the Will have no recollection of ever signing or seeing the Will.
My colleague who was instructed has contacted SRA Ethics and received guidance and in that advice they advised that a STEP member should submit a question on this forum to see if anyone had experienced anything similar.
I can confirm that the estate has not been administered under the Will.
My question is has anyone come across this scenario before and if so are we under a duty to disclose the fact that a fraudulent Will has been made to the police or should we be informing the Client who was not involved with the Will to report the matter themselves?
Thank you and I look forward to hearing from anyone who has had a similar experience.
Kind regards,
Samantha Parkinson (Nee Smith)