To: Hawkmoon who wrote (92694 ) 7/20/2012 5:45:21 AM From: Maurice Winn 3 Recommendations Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 219954 In 1990 my father died. I did the probate of the will myself, took it to the High Court which handles such things, along with my brother, the other executor. We went in to see the boss bloke who was somewhat surprised that somebody was trying to do probate themselves. We sat down, he started and said "Well, there's your first mistake." He obviously thought there were going to be lots of problems and he would refer us to real lawyers who would do their usual masterful job for a "Can't put a price on brains" fee which would turn out to be definitely a price and a high one at that. CB is obviously confused about brains and prices. If I tell them that their inability to put a price on brains is obvious and that my payment will actually be a fraction of that, they are quite confident in their ability to put a price on brains. I enquired what the problem was of said High Court legal ace [who was actually a pleasant chap] and he pointed out that the papers had a hole through them and a metal paper holder through them. I asked him if that was going to be much of a problem, to draw him out a little [I can't remember the actual conversation]. When I explained that that was interesting because the will had been organized and held by Bruce Slane, a notable firm around town, and that they were responsible for that, so should I take it back to them, complain to the law society, or go to the police because of their act of vandalism of my father's will, for some reason, he decided it wasn't all that much of a problem after all. After going through the probate documentation and finding no other problems, he said we were going to be very rare people to actually witness the actual probate of a will, whereupon he got out his stamp and duly gave probate. So the only mistake was by a high-powered law firm. $500 seems cheap to even walk in the door, especially in the USA where I thought legal prices are through the roof. $2 would be postage!! Stamps and envelopes, not to mention licking them, isn't free, and law firms are not charities. It used to legal to do my own conveyancing, but the cartel shut the door on that one in the process of creating licensed conveyancers. Now I legally have to hire somebody to do a bit of form filling, once again putting a very high price on not very high-powered brains. Mqurice