In the context of what Government spends, £4.5 million to store our collective Will records doesn’t seem unreasonable. The cost should also be covered by probate fees, where what you pay should cover the cost of storing the original. At the end of the day, our Will records are a collective store of our last wishes. The real documents, or knowing that the real documents are still there, makes them tangible, rather like family photographs. The ones in the album are the ones we will keep. I don’t expect this to be rational, but ‘digitisation’ represents the march of progress, economy, technlogy, the digital over the analogue. Can we not just let some things, like our last wills, to be left in peace.
Laura Creighton
5 months ago
New business opportunity for the ransomware criminals. Maybe the MoJ should talk to the British Library.
Steve Murray
5 months ago
Fascinating insight into the issues that the Long Now Foundation (LNF) were starting to consider a quarter of a century ago. The link the author provides is well worth reading.
Interesting also that the LNF have started to use a date format with years beginning with zero, e.g. 02023. Some might consider this an affectation, and no doubt in ordinary circumstances it’s not something that’s going to be introduced. It does, however, present (at least) two issues.
Should we fail to use it, will digital archives after the year 9999 CE become difficult to interpret? It’s a bit like the Year 2000 scare which, of course, didn’t materialise but it does at least foresee the potential for that issue – which is still an almost unimaginable way off… which leads to the second issue.
By introducing the concept of our species (or its future iterations) being around in another 8 millennia, a perspective is provided which seeks to suggest we just might be, which is something i believe is worth doing.
Andrew Buckley
5 months ago
Well I had no idea that my Mum and Dad’s Last Will and Testament’s were kept in an archive somewhere! I simply assumed that after probate they disappeared (in the bin probably).
You can request a copy of your parents’ wills, or indeed anybody else’s, for a nominal sum. Mrs U does it quite often for family history purposes.
David Barnett
5 months ago
Yes, digitise for ease of access and reference, but always keep the physical, human readable original for reference and deterrence to digital forgery.
miss pink
5 months ago
If the documents are stored using a coherent system why does it take weeks to find a requested will? I thought creating and maintaining such systems were why we have librarians and archivists. Not related to wills, but here in New Zealand I recently found out that medical records are usually only kept for about 10 years which caused problems for my son who needed assessments and medical history to prove that he had received treatment before in a bid to avoid having to wait 18 months in a queue to access medication.
William Shaw
5 months ago
Hand it all over to the Mormons.
They preserve everything.
In the context of what Government spends, £4.5 million to store our collective Will records doesn’t seem unreasonable. The cost should also be covered by probate fees, where what you pay should cover the cost of storing the original. At the end of the day, our Will records are a collective store of our last wishes. The real documents, or knowing that the real documents are still there, makes them tangible, rather like family photographs. The ones in the album are the ones we will keep. I don’t expect this to be rational, but ‘digitisation’ represents the march of progress, economy, technlogy, the digital over the analogue. Can we not just let some things, like our last wills, to be left in peace.
New business opportunity for the ransomware criminals. Maybe the MoJ should talk to the British Library.
Fascinating insight into the issues that the Long Now Foundation (LNF) were starting to consider a quarter of a century ago. The link the author provides is well worth reading.
Interesting also that the LNF have started to use a date format with years beginning with zero, e.g. 02023. Some might consider this an affectation, and no doubt in ordinary circumstances it’s not something that’s going to be introduced. It does, however, present (at least) two issues.
Should we fail to use it, will digital archives after the year 9999 CE become difficult to interpret? It’s a bit like the Year 2000 scare which, of course, didn’t materialise but it does at least foresee the potential for that issue – which is still an almost unimaginable way off… which leads to the second issue.
By introducing the concept of our species (or its future iterations) being around in another 8 millennia, a perspective is provided which seeks to suggest we just might be, which is something i believe is worth doing.
Well I had no idea that my Mum and Dad’s Last Will and Testament’s were kept in an archive somewhere! I simply assumed that after probate they disappeared (in the bin probably).
You can request a copy of your parents’ wills, or indeed anybody else’s, for a nominal sum. Mrs U does it quite often for family history purposes.
Yes, digitise for ease of access and reference, but always keep the physical, human readable original for reference and deterrence to digital forgery.
If the documents are stored using a coherent system why does it take weeks to find a requested will? I thought creating and maintaining such systems were why we have librarians and archivists. Not related to wills, but here in New Zealand I recently found out that medical records are usually only kept for about 10 years which caused problems for my son who needed assessments and medical history to prove that he had received treatment before in a bid to avoid having to wait 18 months in a queue to access medication.
Hand it all over to the Mormons.
They preserve everything.