| 1. | Q. | What is a Will? |
| A. | A Will, also referred to as a Last Will and Testament, is a legal document
in which you nominate a person or persons (executor/s) to pay your debts and distribute your estate on trust for specified beneficiaries when you pass away. | |
| 2. | Q. | What are Will Documents? |
| A. | The following are collectively referred to as Will Documents: | |
| ENDURING POWER OF ATTORNEY – a legal document in which you nominate a person or persons (attorney/s) to make financial and legal decisions on your behalf when you become incapacitated. | ||
| ENDURING GUARDIANSHIP (Medical Power of Attorney) – a legal document in which you nominate a person or persons (guardian/s) to make medical and lifestyle decisions on your behalf when you become incapacitated. | ||
| ADVANCE HEALTH DIRECTIVE (Living Will) – a document that requests your doctor to withhold and withdraw medical treatment that artificially prolongs your life. | ||
| LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT – a legal document in which you nominate a person or persons (executor/s) to pay your debts and distribute your estate on trust for specified beneficiaries when you pass away. | ||
| 3. | Q. | Do I have to make a Will? |
| A. | It is highly advisable to make a Will to ensure that the beneficiaries of your choice receive what you want to leave them. If you do not make a Will or your Will cannot be located, the Courts will decide on how your assets are distributed. This could be different to your wishes and in some circumstances this action could also involve extra costs. | |
| 4. | Q. | How do I register my legal document? |
| A. | Complete the Register A Document form and make a payment of $25 using a credit card through the provided secure payment page. | |
| Once the payment has been processed and your document details have been entered, a confirmation email will be sent to your email address listing the document details lodged by you. | ||
| 5. | Q. | How do I know that I have registered with Where There Is A Will? |
| A. | An email will be sent to your email address as confirmation of your lodgement. However, should you at a later date question if you have lodged your details, we would encourage you to conduct a search via our Search For A Document page. | |
| 6. | Q. | What happens when I lodge my details with Where There Is A Will? |
| A. | Once you have entered your account details you will be directed to a secure Commonwealth Bank web page to make your once only (per document) payment of $25. When the payment has been successfully processed you will be able to add the details of the document you are lodging. After the document details have been saved you will be sent an email confirming the details of the document/s recorded with Where There Is A Will. | |
| Opportunity also exists to lodge further documents eg: Power of Attorney and Deed Box. Each new lodgement will cost $25. In this example of two further documents, the additional cost would be $50. | ||
| 7. | Q. | Oops! I've made a mistake in recording the details lodged. |
| A. | To help ensure that you record your document information correctly, once you have completed recording the document details, an email will be sent to you listing all the document information entered. You then have 24 hours in which to make any amendments, which will also be confirmed to you by email. | |
| After the 24-hour period has lapsed, the document record will be locked-in and can only be changed with payment of a $10 fee. | ||
| 8. | Q. | How do I take advantage of any 'Special Offers' that may be available? |
| A. | 'Special Offers' are only available for individual customers and are not available for those who are listed on our site via involvement through a participating Organisation. To take advantage of any current 'Special Offer' simply click on the link within the special offer and follow the instructions on screen | |
| 9. | Q. | I can't remember if I have registered, what can I do? |
| A. | We would encourage you to do a search, by entering all the information required in our Search For A Document facility. If your details have previously been lodged with us they will appear in the search results. | |
| 10. | Q. | What if I have forgotten my password? |
| A. | If you have forgotten your password to access and change your document details, you will be able to step through a forgotten my password process. This involves first entering your email address and date of birth. If these details are found in the online database you will then be asked the password prompt question, which was set up during the creation of your account with us. If you answer the question correctly, your current password will be sent to your email address. | |
| 11. | Q. | How much will it cost to have an Organisation, such as my Solicitor, register the location of my documents with Where There Is A Will for me? |
| A. | As with an individual registering the location of their own documents with Where There Is A Will, the one-off cost for an Organisation to register your documents with Where There Is A Will is $25. Of this, $15 is retained by the Organisation for its administration costs and $10 goes to Where There Is A Will for processing the registration of your documents. | |
| So long as you remain with that Organisation, Where There Is A Will will require no further payment. However, the Organisation may choose to impose additional fees at its discretion. | ||
| 12. | Q. | Who will have access to my personal details? |
| A. | Only enquirers who provide the necessary information as detailed in the Search For A Document facility will be provided with the location of your legal documents. They will not be informed of any more of your personal details than they have provided to undertake a search. | |
| 13. | Q. | Do you hold a copy of my documents? |
| A. | No. For your security and privacy we do not hold a copy of your document/s. We only record the details of where the documents are being held. | |
| 14. | Q. | What if I change my documents in the future? |
| A. | We would encourage you to log into your account with Where There Is A Will and update the relevant information in your records. | |
| The key information to keep up to date is: | ||
|
1. The latest document date; and
2. The current location of the document. If a Solicitor holds your document and they have previously registered the details with us, they can amend the details at no additional cost from us. Individuals making changes to the documents they have lodged will incur a $10 administration fee per document to be changed (your document will be able to be modified by you for a period of 24 hours after payment of the fee). Any documents lodged under the 'Special Offer' conditions for individuals will be subject to the conditions of the special offer. For example, if the 'Special Offer' covered the free lodgement of four items, then the first four items lodged would be free for the life of your involvement with Where there is a Will, regardless of how many amendments that you may make to those items over the years. | ||
| 15. | Q. | How can I amend my Where There Is A Will account details in my individual account? |
| A. | You will need to go to the Amend Lodgement Details screen, login using your email address, password and date of birth, and then click on the "Update My Details" link, which appears at the top of the screen. This will direct you to another screen where you can modify your password and all the other details. This screen will also tell you how many unused documents you may have, and the date the account was created. Click the "Save Changes" button when you have completed your changes to update your account. | |
| 16. | Q. | How do I gain access to my 'Private' page? |
| A. | From the screen 'Register a Document - Individual' you will see at the top of the screen that you have three options: 1/ View previously lodged documents, 2/ Private page and 3/ Log out. Click on the Private page option to access the Private page screen. | |
| 17. | Q. | How can I view the information contained within the 'Private' page? |
| A. | To view the information in your Private page you must log in to your Where There Is A Will account and then navigate to the Private page as described in question 16 above. A search through documents lodged with Where There Is A Will will not display the contents of your Private page. | |
| 18. | Q. | Who has access to my 'Private' page? |
| A. | Only you as holder of your Where There Is A Will account have access to the Private page. Any 'third party' conducting a search for the documents that you have registered with Where there is a Will will not have access to any information recorded on in your Private page. | |
| 19. | Q. | How can I amend my Where There Is A Will account details in my individual account? |
| A. | You will need to go to the Amend Lodgement Details screen, login using your email address, password and date of birth, and then click on the "Update My Details" link, which appears at the top of the screen. This will direct you to another screen where you can modify your password and all the other details. This screen will also tell you how many unused documents you may have, and the date the account was created. Click the "Save Changes" button when you have completed your changes to update your account. | |
| 20. | Q. | How can I amend my document and personal details if the details were lodged by an Organisation? |
| A. | You would need to contact the Organisation in question and they will attend to the updating of your details with us. Whilst the Organisation may charge you a fee for this, there will not be a charge from Where There Is A Will. Once the details have been updated a confirmation email will be sent to you. | |
| 21. | Q. | I note that when I lodge documents privately, I am able to record where additional copies are held at no extra cost. Is this facility available when an Organisation lodges documents on my behalf? |
| A. | For simplicity and to assist Organisations to quickly record and update your information, only the location of original documents is recorded. | |
| Should you wish to have the whereabouts of additional copies of documents recorded with us, we would encourage you to privately lodge a second document record with Where There Is A Will. | ||
| The second document record will need to be associated with a different email address, such as yourname@hotmail.com. When you or any interested party conducts a search, all the documents lodged with us, whether privately or via an Organisation, will be displayed on the screen. | ||
| 22. | Q. | What happens if I wish to change my lodgement details from a private lodgement to being with an Organisation that is already registered with Where There Is A Will? |
| A. | We would request that you send an email to admin@wherethereisawill.com.au, giving the full details of the Organisation, and we will make the change for you at no cost to you. Once the details have been processed an email will be sent to you confirming the change has been made. | |
| Please be aware that when your details have been lodged by an Organisation, you will be unable to record where additional copies of documents are held. To view your lodged documents you will need to search via the Search for a Document page. | ||
| 23. | Q. | What happens if I wish to change my lodgement details from an Organisation to a private lodgement? |
| A. | We would request that you send an email to
admin@wherethereisawill.com.au in which
you will need to provide the following information:
| |
| Once we have processed the change, a confirmation email will be sent to you, detailing the changes. | ||
| You will need to remember that in the future should you wish to update or amend any details in relation to documents lodged, an administration fee of $10 will apply for each document amended. | ||
| 24. | Q. | How much does it cost to do a search? |
| A. | There is no cost to the person conducting the search as we want to make it as easy as possible for them to obtain the information. Any cost was covered when the legal document was originally lodged with Where There Is A Will. | |
| 25. | Q. | What if I have little information about the deceased? |
| A. | Unless all the information is provided as per our search facility, you will not be able to carry out a search. It is expected that any interested person will be able to locate the necessary information to conduct a search. | |
| 26. | Q. | If I submit a search request, will my details be held? |
| A. | Yes. For legal reasons we retain details of all search requests. The information retained includes name of enquirer, physical address of enquirer, email address of enquirer and the IP address of the person conducting the search. | |
| 27. | Q. | Will my payment details be safe? |
| A. | We are using the Commonwealth Bank of Australia secure payment gateway to process all payments made to Where There Is A Will. We are not privy to any of your account payment details. | |
| 28. | Q. | What payment methods do you accept? |
| A. | We accept both Visa and Mastercard debit and credit cards. | |
| 29. | Q. | How secure is the information that you hold? |
| A. | Where There Is A Will employs a number of robust security measures to ensure that information about individuals and their wills and other documents is stored safely and securely and is only accessed by appropriately authorised individuals. These security measures include encryption of your username and password whilst it is transmitted between your computer and Where There Is A Will. However you are responsible for the security of your username and password - we recommend that you do not write down your password or communicate it to others via email. | |
| 30. | Q. | Will my details be used for marketing by either yourselves or by any other companies? |
| A. | No. Not under any circumstance. |
