I’m dealing with my mum’s estate. I can’t find the signed copy of her original Will but I have a photocopy. Can I still use it to wind up her estate?
There are various reasons why a Will might not be found after death. It may be that the person who made the Will deliberately destroyed it, because their wishes had changed. Or the Will might be lodged with a solicitor’s office somewhere, but you don't know which office. Or it could be that the original Will has been lost in known circumstances, for example a fire in a storage unit used by a firm of solicitors.
Youi can’t use a photocopy if your mum decided to destroy the original herself. Even if she did not make a new Will, her intention was to revoke her existing Will and so the photocopy cannot be relied on. If the Will was lodged with a solicitor but you just don’t know which one, then an inquiry can be made with a body such as Certainty National Will Register or with a local Solicitors’ Faculty to find out if a Will is held by anyone. Such enquiries may or may not be successful in turning up the original Will.
If the original will has been lost or destroyed in circumstances start are known, it is possible to use a photocopy to administer the estate. This is done by firstly raising a Court action to prove the tenor of the Will. For example, if Wills are held by a solicitor in an off-site safe storage facility and that facility suffered a flood or a fire which destroyed the original documents held there, then it would be open to the solicitor to raise a Court action and lead evidence by way of Affidavit that the reason for the loss was due to fire or flood and asking the Sheriff to direct that the photocopy of the Will is in fact what the deceased had written.
The option of raising a Court action is not cheap but it does provide a method for continuing to administer an estate on the basis of the last known wishes of the deceased.
If the photocopy cannot be used, then the administration of the estate has to proceed as though your mum had not left a Will and the laws of intestacy would be applied instead of the Will.