How to find a will in the UK when you cannot find the original

Where do you look first when searching for a will?

Start with the paperwork at the person's home, because most wills are found there or in the first phone call the paperwork prompts. What you are hunting for is often not the will itself but a receipt for it: a will registration certificate, a certificate of deposit from the probate service, a solicitor's file reference or a storage receipt all name whoever holds the original.

• Paper files and folders: near insurance documents, the title deeds, pension papers and old bank statements.

• A home safe, a locked drawer or a filing box: and any keys to a safe deposit box or a storage unit.

• Correspondence from a solicitor or will writer: even an old letter gives you a firm name to ring.

• The last few years of bank statements: a regular payment to a solicitor or a storage service is a strong lead.

• Email and any password manager: where the person used an online will service, the confirmation email names it.

Do not remove or unstaple anything from a will you do find. A missing paperclip mark or a torn corner raises questions at the probate registry about whether another document was once attached.

How do you find out if someone left a will with a solicitor or bank?

Ring every solicitor the person is known to have used and ask directly whether the firm holds a will for them. Firms keep wills in safe custody for decades, including for clients they have not seen in twenty years, and they will confirm whether they hold one once you produce a death certificate. Then widen the search geographically: ask firms near where the person lived, near where they worked, and near any property they bought or sold, because a will is often made by whichever firm handled a house purchase.

Where the firm has closed, the file has usually moved rather than disappeared. Solicitors that merge or close normally transfer wills to a successor practice, and the Solicitors Regulation Authority holds documents from firms it has closed down itself. There is no fee to request files or documents from the SRA, and it aims to deal with requests within 8 weeks of receiving complete information (SRA). For a person who has died it needs a death certificate and evidence of the grant, and how many death certificates you need sets out how many to order.

Banks are a weaker lead than they once were, but still worth asking. Some hold wills and deeds in safe custody from years ago, and most have withdrawn the service to new customers. Ask the bereavement team to check for safe custody items as well as accounts.

What is a Certainty will search and what does it cost?

A Certainty will search is a search of The National Will Register, the Law Society's preferred provider of will registration and will search services in the UK. It checks whether a will has been registered, and the wider version also asks law firms in the area whether they hold one.

• Will Register Search: £65 including VAT, completed within 48 hours, checking a register of more than 10.5 million records.

• Will Search Combined: £140 including VAT, completed within 28 days, adding a nationwide geographically targeted search of law firms and professional will writers plus a notice on the Missing Will Noticeboard.

Choose the register search only if you hold a will registration certificate or have good reason to think the will was registered. Registration is not compulsory in the UK, so a clear result means there is no registered will, not that there is no will. The Will Search Combined earns its money when you have no leads at all, because the geographic search reaches firms holding an unregistered original.

A search is also worth running when you do have a will, to check that a later one has not superseded it. An executor who distributes an estate and is then shown a later will is personally exposed, which is why what an executor of a will does treats this as a core duty.

How do you do a probate records search on GOV.UK?

Use the GOV.UK service to search probate records for England and Wales, which covers any death in or after 1858 and tells you whether a grant has been issued. If probate has already been granted, the will is on the record and you can order a copy.

• Copy of a probate record ordered online: £16 each.

• Search by post: £16, which includes a copy of the probate record and the will if there is one, with a response usually within 4 weeks.

• Standing search, where the person died in the last 6 months: £4, which tells you if a grant is issued during the next 6 months.

The copy fee is much higher than it used to be. A copy of a grant or will cost £1.50 until 17 November 2025, when it rose to £16.

Two limits matter before you rely on this search. A new probate record appears online roughly 14 days after probate has been issued, so a very recent grant may not show yet. And records are indexed by the date the grant was issued rather than the date of death, so a record can appear one to two years after the person died.

The standing search is the underused option: where you suspect someone else is applying for probate, £4 buys 6 months of notice and can be renewed. Our guide to what is probate explains what the grant does.

Are wills public documents in the UK?

A will is a private document until probate is granted, and a public one afterwards. Before the grant, no one has a right to see it except the executors, and the executors are not obliged to show it to beneficiaries or family members.

Once a grant of probate is issued, the will is admitted to proof and becomes part of the public record. From that point anyone can order a copy through the GOV.UK probate records service for £16, whether or not they are related to the person or named in the will. That switch is why the search order matters: before a grant exists there is no register to look the person up in, and after one exists a single £16 search settles it.

How do you get a will that was deposited with the probate service?

Apply on form PA7A to the Newcastle District Probate Registry, which now holds wills deposited with the probate service for safekeeping. There is no charge for withdrawing a deposited will, and it takes around 4 weeks for the documents to be sent to you (GOV.UK).

Send the certificate of deposit that the person was given when the will was lodged, together with an official copy of the death certificate. Form PA7A needs a wet ink signature, because HM Courts and Tribunals Service will not accept an electronic signature on it (The Law Society). Someone who is not the named executor but is applying for probate needs a letter of authority as well. Where you cannot find the certificate of deposit, still apply and say so, because the safe custody enquiries team can check by name and date of birth.

Depositing a will with the probate service costs a one-off £24 payable to HM Courts and Tribunals Service, which is useful to know in reverse: a £24 payment to the court in the person's records means there is a deposited will to retrieve.

What happens if the original will is lost and only a copy survives?

If the original will was last known to be in the testator's possession and cannot be found after death, the law presumes the testator destroyed it intending to revoke it. That presumption is why a photocopy on its own does not settle anything.

The rule comes from section 20 of the Wills Act 1837, which allows a will to be revoked by destruction. Where the will can be traced to the testator and is then missing, the court starts from the assumption that they destroyed it deliberately, in the absence of satisfactory evidence to the contrary.

The presumption can be rebutted with evidence that the testator did not destroy the will, or had no intention of revoking it: statements showing their wishes were unchanged, evidence that a solicitor rather than the testator last held it, or a fire, flood, house clearance or move that explains the loss.

Where a copy or a reconstruction exists, an application can be made under rule 54 of the Non-Contentious Probate Rules 1987 for an order admitting it to proof. The application goes to a registrar and must be supported by affidavit evidence about the will's existence and the accuracy of the copy (legislation.gov.uk). Where the solicitor who drafted and stored the will can give that evidence, the registry may admit the copy. This is one of the few points in estate administration where early legal advice saves money rather than costing it.

What happens if no will is found at all?

If no will is found after a proper search, the estate is dealt with as an intestacy, and a fixed statutory order decides who inherits rather than the family. The person entitled to deal with the estate applies for letters of administration instead of a grant of probate.

Document the search before you go down that road. Keep a note of the firms you contacted, the searches you ran and the dates, because a later will surfacing after distribution is the risk you are guarding against. The intestacy rules set out who inherits and in what order.

How do you search for a will in Scotland or Northern Ireland?

The GOV.UK probate records service covers England and Wales only, so a search elsewhere in the UK goes to different bodies. In Scotland, check the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service if the will may have been registered with a court, Registers of Scotland if it may have been registered in the Books of Council and Session, and National Records of Scotland for historical wills (mygov.scot).

In Northern Ireland, probate is handled by the NICTS Probate Office, and the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland holds the will calendars for historical searches. The National Will Register covers the whole UK, so a register search is worth running wherever the person lived.