INSIDE MONEY: PROGRAMME 5: “In Safe Hands?”
Presenter:  	Lesley Curwen
Listener:  	David Galpin
Producer:  	Philippa Goodrich


First broadcast Saturday 21st August 2004 at 12.00pm on BBC 
Radio 4, Repeated Monday 23rd August 2004 at 3.00pm on BBC Radio 4

THIS IS A TRANSCRIPT OF THE LONGER REPEATED VERSION

CURWEN:		We all hope, at the end of our lives, to pass on our worldly goods 
to our loved ones. But as you’re about hear, there are glaring loopholes in the rules 
surrounding inheritance. These have led to financial losses for many bereaved families, 
just as they’re at their most vulnerable. For one of our listeners, David Galpin, from 
Romford in Essex, the repercussions from his father’s death have gone on for the last 
three years.

GALPIN:		May 2001, my father died after a short illness.  The beneficiary of 
my father’s estate was my stepmother. We decided to let a professional company deal 
with the handling of my father’s financial affairs we didn’t really want to handle all the 
finances as well as handling everything else and the grief. We just wanted to avoid any 
more upset,  just let someone that knew what they was doing take it.
 
CURWEN:		So the family turned to a company which claimed to have handled 
estates worth more than 4 billion pounds.

ADVERT:  		Legacies Group: Planning today – to protect tomorrow.

CURWEN: 		The company in question was Legacies Will and Probate Services 
Ltd. It offered to handle all the correspondence and the humdrum paperwork for 
David’s stepmother, as well as the inheritance side. Most people would choose a 
solicitor or a bank to administer a relative’s will, or they might act as the executor 
themselves. But Legacies Will and Probate Services Ltd was not run by expert lawyers 
or bankers and as David was to discover, it didn’t have the same levels of protection 
for its clients.

GALPIN:		Legacies we assumed were doing everything.  The money had 
started to come in from my father’s estate, that was all being collected by Legacies, the 
same as in the case of their other clients.  It was a case that stepmother phoned up one 
day to find out what was going on and the telephone was answered by Grant 
Thorntons.

CURWEN:		Who were they?

GALPIN: 		They was the appointed liquidator.  Legacies had gone into 
liquidation, or were being put into liquidation, it eventually turned out that there was 
£4.8 million missing from the money that had been paid in for all these estates of the 
deceased.  

CURWEN:		It must have been a shock.  

GALPIN:		It was a shock then. That’s when it sort of really hit home, rather 
than expecting the money to be safe because it is being controlled by a supposedly 
professional company and all of a sudden realising that money that people have saved, 
not only in our case, but everybody’s case was similar. Money that people had saved to 
sort of look after their surviving relatives, spouses, grandchildren, children in the 
future, all of a sudden it seemed to be missing.

CURWEN:	What was the effect on your family?

GALPIN:	It was devastating for us. Money that we thought was safe, had 
suddenly gone missing to the tune of £55,000.  

CURWEN: 		The missing £55,000 was just part of the Galpin’s estate. David’s 
family was one of 250 which had entrusted the company with their inheritances. 
Legacies Will and Probate Services Ltd, which from now on we’ll just call Legacies, 
was wound up, and the liquidators began trying to recover what was left of the 
company’s assets. They managed to get back money for some clients, but £22,000 of 
the Galpin’s inheritance is still missing and other families have received nothing. The 
three bosses of the company have been disqualified and declared unfit to be directors 
for eleven years – in one case for twelve years. The company is currently being 
investigated by the Serious Fraud Office although no charges have yet been brought. 
The worst shock for many clients was that the company was not a member of a 
professional body that would have provided a safety-net of financial compensation.  
David Galpin agreed to join us at Inside Money to investigate how to stop this 
happening to other bereaved families.

GALPIN:		I’d like to find out how probate works, not only for future but 
obviously to find out whether these loop holes can be closed.  And I’d like to find out 
what sort of regulation can be introduced so this doesn’t happen to people in the future. 
These companies are unregulated.  And it looks as though there’s no protection at all. 

CURWEN:  		Our first port of call was James Earp, the man from Grant 
Thornton who’s been involved in the case since Legacies was wound up.  It’s his firm 
which has managed to recover a portion of the missing money for some families. 

GALPIN:		James, is Legacies a particularly bad case?

EARP:		I think it was a very disturbing case for me and the staff who 
worked on it at Grant Thornton simply because the clients have been dealt a double 
blow. Not only had they suffered the bereavement of a loved one, but also they’ve lost, 
or a large percentage of them have lost, a large part of their inheritance.   So it was a 
very emotional case and a very tragic one as far as we at Grant Thornton were 
concerned.  And if you think about how we had to deal with the case as well, I think 
that’s worth pointing out, is that the company had effectively ceased trading.  There 
were no employees, the computers had been turned off and there was files from ceiling 
to floor and we had to sort them all out.  And the telephones, as you can imagine, were 
going non-stop because people wanted to know what was going on.

CURWEN: 		And Grant Thornton is still dealing with the fall-out from the 
Legacies case. There are other private companies offering probate and estate 
administration services in the UK, but no-one knows exactly how many are operating. 
Some of them opt to belong to industry associations which require they must have 
insurance to protect their clients’ funds. So David asked James Earp, what kind of 
insurance Legacies had had.

EARP:		The insurance which Legacies had was the general kind of 
insurance policy which any company would have.  There was no specific insurance 
policy to cover or protect, if you like, clients’ money.  To give you an example of that, 
I, as an insolvency practitioner, have to take out what they call an insurance bond for 
every case which I am involved in. Now the reason for having that specific bond is that 
in the event that something goes wrong and money goes missing, the bond is there to, 
if you like, replenish the funds which were due to clients or creditors.  

CURWEN: 		But there was nothing like that for Legacies?

EARP: 		But there was nothing like that for Legacies in the Legacies case.

GALPIN:		Do you think such companies should be regulated?

EARP:		I think any company that’s dealing with the public’s money 
should be regulated, especially when you think about people in a vulnerable situation. 
They need to, I think, have the comforts of knowing they’re dealing with professional 
regulated people where there’s a safety net.

GALPIN:		How?

EARP:		Well if I can give you an example.  The Financial Services 
Authority, they regulate many professionals, and accountants are one of those, and they 
run a compensation scheme.  So what that means is that an individual can appeal 
directly to the regulatory body and doesn’t have to go to the courts.  

CURWEN: 		And if you look at the model of the FSA, the Financial Services 
Authority, that’s a government appointed regulator with its duties laid down in law in 
an Act of Parliament, with an official compensation scheme. James Earp thought 
something like that could be put in place for services like probate and estate 
administration. It was one of several options we’d look at. Now, I warn you, the 
inheritance business is fiendishly complicated, possibly one of the most complex 
subjects we’ve tackled at Inside Money. And it can be especially baffling for people 
who are distracted by grief. It’s not a simple matter to unpick which bits of it are 
regulated and where exactly the holes lie. We needed someone with heaps of 
experience to explain it all, so we turned to Keith Biggs, who’s been the probate 
registrar in Winchester for 20 years. He’s the government official dealing with all 
probate applications in the local area, and as a civil servant, he doesn’t often talk to the 
media. He was able to look up the case records for David’s father.  
 
KEITH BIGGS IN PROBATE OFFICE – Keith “ If you can give me some details 
….computer records..”

CURWEN: 		After David had looked over the probate records, we settled down 
to get an explanation from Keith Biggs of how the system works.

GALPIN:		Keith, could you explain what exactly is probate?

BIGGS:		Probate is an order made by the High Court giving an authority to 
people called executors to administer the estate of the deceased person.  The Probate 
Registry checks validity of the Will and gives this court order called “a grant of 
probate” to the executors to enable them to collect in all the deceased’s assets that 
belong to him at his death and then to distribute them in accordance with his wishes 
which he set out in his Will.  

CURWEN:		After probate’s been granted, what happens next?

BIGGS:		Once probate has been granted, then the asset holders are sent 
copies of the grant of probate, sealed by the court, we issue sealed copies and they 
simply pay the money over to the executor.  The executor collects in all the estate and 
when he’s collected it all in and paid all the debts off, made sure he’s paid all the 
debts, then he starts to distribute the estate, that is to give it away in accordance with 
the wishes that were set out in the Will.  

CURWEN: 		David was beginning to understand there are two distinct stages. 
One of them is tightly regulated, the legal process where a grant of probate is applied 
for – individual executors such as relatives can do this, but only lawyers are allowed to 
do it for a profit. In David Galpin’s case, Legacies had to hire a lawyer to do this bit 
for them. But the next stage is quite a different matter, according to Keith Biggs. 

BIGGS:		The administration of the estate is a different step. That’s the 
collecting in of the assets and distributing the estate, that can be done by anybody and 
anybody can charge for their services. That is not regulated in any way.

CURWEN: 		David was astounded to discover that this second and crucial stage 
is completely unregulated. The second stage is the nuts and bolts of administering the 
estate, getting in money and paying it out, when large amounts of cash are sloshing 
around. And it’s at this point that money can go missing. David Galpin thought his 
family would have been more protected if strict regulation had been in place. He had 
more questions for our probate registrar.  

GALPIN:		In your view, what do you think of the private companies that 
offer this probate and estate administration service?

BIGGS:		There are undoubtedly reputable companies, there are disreputable 
companies. How you determine between them, I don’t know.  The advantage of using a 
solicitor or a bank, is of course the solicitor before he’s allowed to practice must have a 
practising certificate and must carry insurance.  The banks, must have sufficient 
wherewithal to cover themselves in the event of any claims for negligence.  The 
difficulty with these private companies, as I see it anyway, is that there is no backup, 
there is no insurance, there is no guarantee to you, David, if anything goes wrong, that 
you’re going to get your money back from any other source.  If these companies were 
indeed insured, like solicitors, then indeed you would have a recourse at the end of the 
day if everything goes pear shaped.  

GALPIN:		So do you believe that these type of companies should have 
compulsory regulation and also an insurance-backed policy to cover for these 
eventualities?

BIGGS:		That’s a difficult question for me to answer.  I think it’s a matter 
for government policy.  If the government feels that the public need protection, then 
it’s a matter for them to legislate to enable the protection to be provided. But there is 
clearly a problem and I have had experience here in my registry of these private 
companies who’ve gone bankrupt, who have left people high and dry with Wills and 
partially completed administration of estates which, at the end of the day, has required 
even more expense to unravel and put right and, at the end of the day, of course it’s the 
beneficiaries who suffer.    

CURWEN: 		It’s possible the loopholes which caught out David’s family will 
be examined by the government. It’s planning an overhaul of the rules governing our 
legal system and so it’s commissioned a review of legal services, which will look into 
so-called “regulatory gaps”.  Sir David Clementi, a former Bank of England deputy 
governor, is leading this review. We asked to talk to him, but we were told he can’t say 
anything until the review is completed at the end of this year. One of the gaps at issue,  
is, yes, you’ve guessed it,  the lack of regulation around the actual collection and 
distribution of inheritance money. We had heard that David Galpin might have been 
better off if he’d gone to a solicitor. We wanted to find out more about this. Solicitors 
are governed by a professional code of conduct given force by an Act of Parliament. 

CURWEN:		We travelled West to Salisbury to meet a solicitor who’s handled 
many inheritance cases on behalf of charities which have been cheated out of their 
money. He’s Peter Jeffreys from Wilson’s law firm. 

GALPIN:		If I’d used a solicitor to do the work on my father’s estate what 
difference would there have been? 

JEFFREYS: 		We as solicitors have to have professional indemnity insurance, 
and that means that if we make a mistake when dealing with a client’s affairs, the 
insurance is there to pay out and make good the loss.  All solicitors have to have 
insurance up to at least £1 million per claim. In addition to that, if someone suffers loss 
because of the dishonesty of a solicitor, and if there’s no other remedy available, then 
the Law Society has what is called “the compensation fund” and that can pay out the 
amount of a claim in full.  So had your father’s estate been dealt with by a solicitor, if 
the loss wasn’t covered by the indemnity insurance, then it should still have been 
covered by the compensation fund.  

CURWEN:		So is that perfect reassurance? 

JEFFREYS:		We live in an imperfect world and I have to accept that solicitors 
do sometimes get things wrong, mistakes are made and occasionally members of the 
public do suffer at the hands of a solicitor.  But I think people can feel quite reassured 
that there’s a much higher level of protection and that it’s a much better and safer 
framework.  

CURWEN:  		Peter Jeffreys explained there’s also the question of costs. Often 
companies like Legacies charge a percentage of the estate value – in David’s case that 
was 3 percent of the first 75 thousand pounds, 2 pc on the next 75 thousand and one 
per cent for the rest. But solicitors can charge either fixed fees or percentages, or a 
mixture of the two, and there are appeals procedures if you feel you’ve been charged 
too much. That’s not usually the case with private companies.  

GALPIN:		Have you any experience of the private companies that offer this 
probate and estate administration?

JEFFREYS:		We have had some quite bad experiences.  I can think of one case 
we dealt with recently where a bill of approximately £15,000 was charged for a very 
straightforward job and that included, for example, photocopying work done at a £150 
an hour which is obviously completely disgraceful. And in that case we threatened to 
sue them, we threatened to take them to court and in the end we didn’t need to go to 
court and we were able to settle it by getting quite a substantial reduction in their bill.

GALPIN:		What level of come back is there against these private companies?

JEFFREYS:		Unfortunately, you as the consumer have got much less you can 
do to protect your position against these agencies.  Unlike solicitors where there are 
rights through the Law Society and rights through the courts, you can take these people 
to court but it tends to be a more cumbersome procedure to do so. If an unqualified 
person dealing with an estate has grossly overcharged, or if you think they’ve been 
misappropriating money, then you’re generally going to have to bring a trust action, 
probably a breach of trust action in the High Court.

CURWEN:		So you have to sue them?

JEFFREYS:		Yes, exactly and that carries cost implications.

CURWEN:		So what do you think should be done about this?

JEFFREYS:		Within the relatively recent past other regulatory frameworks have 
been introduced for other professional bodies and I do think that we now need a similar 
sort of body for all people who are involved in will-related services.

CURWEN:		David, we’re in the middle of Salisbury. What did you think of all 
those details about how lawyers do things?

GALPIN:		It was interesting to note that the level of compensation that they 
have and how that would have helped in my particular case.  And it also goes to show 
the kind of compensation and regulation needed in the industry as a whole.

CURWEN:		Do you wish you’d used a lawyer? 

GALPIN:		Yes
CURWEN:		I didn’t really need to ask you that, did I?

GALPIN:		No definitely not

CURWEN:		With hindsight?

GALPIN:		Ah. Hindsight’s a wonderful thing.

CURWEN:  		Even if ministers decide not to bring in full-blooded regulation at 
every stage of the inheritance process, there are ideas which might make the system 
more transparent and accountable. We wanted to show David one method which might 
be introduced in England, Wales and Northern Ireland; it would mean borrowing from 
the quite different legal system operating in Scotland. This dictates that a list of the 
dead person’s assets must be published very early in the legal process. David Galpin 
realised it probably wouldn’t have prevented the financial losses in his case. But it 
might reduce the possibility of future fraud and incompetence. We introduced David to 
Carole Hope, a lawyer from the Edinburgh firm, Murray Beith Murray.

GALPIN:		Carol, what are the main differences between the Scottish and the 
English probate service?

HOPE:	In Scotland probate is known as confirmation. This involves the 
executors compiling a schedule of all the assets of the deceased, all items owned or 
part-owned by the deceased and lodging that in the sheriff court along with the Will, if 
there is one.  As well as showing details of the person who has died and the executors, 
the confirmation and the certificates which are issued show the assets as well. They 
will show the bank accounts, the amount in the bank at the date of death, they will 
show the number of shares held, for example, and executors can’t deal with an asset. 
For example, they can’t close an account or sell shares unless that asset is shown on the 
confirmation certificate.

CURWEN:		And does that protect beneficiaries?
HOPE:		I think it protects beneficiaries by adding a transparency to the 
whole situation. It means that the assets which belong to the deceased at the time of 
death are a matter of public record. 

CURWEN:		Isn’t there a question about privacy here though, because here 
we’re publishing a list of all the assets publicly available to everybody at the start of 
the process. Aren’t people a bit worried about that?

HOPE:		They can be a bit worried about it.  When I say it’s a public 
record, people would have to go and seek that out.  

CURWEN:		Do you think this kind of list of assets should be applied outside 
Scotland in the rest of the United Kingdom?

HOPE:		I’ve certainly heard other solicitors and also representatives of 
charities and certain people from the police saying that they think it would be helpful 
because it certainly discourages some types of criminal activity. I don’t think it would 
prevent embezzlement by someone determined to do it, but it does mean that there is 
an external record of what is in an estate, what assets the person owned. I don’t think 
anything’s fail-safe. It is not completely fail-safe against dishonest solicitors or others 
who see vast sums of money coming through their hands in their professional capacity 
and are tempted to act in a criminal way.  

CURWEN: 		The problem of will fraud is serious – estimates of how much it 
costs vary from 150 million pounds a year to 250 million.  And some argue the need 
for tougher rules is becoming ever more urgent. Why? Because the government has 
plans to open up the process to more competition at the end of this year. This will 
encourage more private, unqualified companies to offer one-stop-shop services to 
handle inheritances. The idea is to offer consumers more choice.  But will there be any 
safeguards for people like David Galpin?  We asked to speak to a minister from the 
department for Constitutional Affairs or DECAF as it’s fondly known, the government 
department responsible. But there was no one available for interview. We got a 
statement instead.

DCA STATEMENT:	“At present the writing of wills and the administration of 
estates is unregulated.  These areas will be looked at by Sir David Clementi in his 
review, where part of his remit is to look at regulatory gaps. Sir David will report to 
Constitutional Affairs Secretary Lord Falconer by the end of the year and we will 
respond at that time.”

CURWEN: 		We showed David Galpin the government’s response. 
 
GALPIN:		I’d welcome the David Clementi review but what it will offer and 
when it will come into effect is still undecided and obviously it doesn’t offer the 
protection that is needed now.

CURWEN:		You think it’s needed straight away?

GALPIN:		If it’s a year, eighteen months, two years down the line, we don’t 
know what can happen in the meantime.  

CURWEN:		Other people could lose out.

GALPIN:		That’s right, they could be in the same position that both my 
family and obviously all of the other people involved in our case found themselves in.

CURWEN: 		The government plans to allow private companies to carry out the 
first, tightly regulated stage of applying for probate, the bit which only lawyers can do 
for profit at the moment. The companies will have to conform to some new rules. But 
that only covers the already regulated bit of the process. It doesn’t address the central 
issues – the fact that there’s no government regulation of the way estates are 
distributed, and no automatic compensation scheme. The statement confirmed the 
market will be opened up at the end of 2004. David Galpin found that worrying.  

GALPIN:		I think that we need the regulation to be put in force definitely 
before it’s opened up for competition and we also need to have some form of 
compulsory compensation scheme set up for these companies to protect families in the 
future.

CURWEN: 		But what shape could the regulation take? We’d already heard 
James Earp suggest it should be based on a model similar to the Financial Services 
Authority, which has legal powers to police banks, financial companies and advisers. 
 
For another opinion, David talked to Frank Nesbitt, a policeman with huge experience 
of fraud cases, a detective constable in the economic crime unit at Northumbria Police. 
He told David, in his view, there must be a compulsory safety-net to protect the clients 
of private companies.   

NESBITT:		I think that if you’re going to set up a regulatory body - ie an 
independent body set up by the government to ensure there’s regulation on probate 
services, then there should also be a system of compensation installed either that be a 
government thing or the bodies who wish to become involved in probate matters 
should contribute into much like what the travel agents do at the moment with their 
ABTA.

CURWEN:		So there’d be a levy on every company that was involved to pay 
for the regulator?

NESBITT:		Yes. The unfortunate thing is though they would probably pass 
those charges down to the consumer on top of what they would charge for the 
administration of the estate.

CURWEN: 		Many people would think it was worth paying a bit more for 
protection. But Frank Nesbitt had even more radical thoughts – he wanted to see tough 
regulation at every stage of the inheritance business, for everyone involved, lawyers, 
bankers and others, because there’s so much temptation to dip fingers in the till. And 
he thinks that’s now more necessary than ever. 

GALPIN:		Frank, what are your thoughts regarding the government’s 
proposed plan to open up the probate services industry to competition?

NESBITT:		I think it’s a good idea if it’s regulated correctly. 
 
GALPIN:		I agree with you there Frank, but I think the regulation needs to be 
put in place before it’s opened up for competition.

NESBITT:		I quite agree, I mean let’s be fair about it.  If say, for instance, you 
are a charter fishing boat, I know this sounds rather an obscure way of looking at it.  If 
you’re a chartered fishing boat, you have to get all kinds of licensing control before 
you can operate and I think the same change should apply to any company that wishes 
to set itself up in the probate system. It should be licensed before it actually starts 
dealing with probate. So therefore the regulation should be put in place before they’re 
allowed to do it and all those firms that are doing it now, should be regulated.

CURWEN: 		But there’s a hitch. Any new regulation is likely to emerge from 
the Clementi Review we’d heard about earlier, which reports at the end of this year.  
It’s precisely at that point that the market will be opened up to competition. 
What we’d discovered was a consensus that more safety-features must be brought in to 
protect bereaved families. But so far there are no concrete government plans to close 
the loopholes which caused David Galpin’s family to lose money at one of the saddest 
moments in their lives. He’d come to the end of his interviews with experts and his 
investigation of the inheritance industry.

CURWEN:		David what do you think the various experts had in common?

GALPIN: 		Being experts in their own particular field, it seems to be they’re 
the type of people that should all get round together to discuss how to regulate it 
because they can see the potential loopholes and hopefully close those. I don’t believe 
that you can make something a 100 % fail-safe but all of the experts agreed that there 
was no regulation for the private companies handling the estates of the deceased. 
Unfortunately we can’t do anything about the past, it’s a case of stopping this 
happening in the future.
 
CURWEN:		What does all this make you feel about human nature?

GALPIN:		You can’t really believe that people would lower themselves to 
intentionally do this type of thing knowing that the families have just lost a loved one and are 
obviously suffering as it is and then to have this happen.  If this industry isn’t regulated 
properly, I think it will always be open to abuse and the temptation will always be there for 
people to misappropriate funds from people who are suffering through the loss of a loved one. 
It’s seems to be a question of justice.


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