It’s likely that at some point in your career as an Estate Planner you’re going to be asked a question from a client that you don’t on the face of it, know the answer to without carrying out further research. Your client may have a strange request that they insist needs to be included in the Will, you may have a complicated situation which you need breaking down to include in the Will, or you may just require assistance with some drafting. The Technical Advice Team are here to assist you.
Who is entitled to receive technical advice?
Technical advice is a benefit for full members only. This means any member of the Society with the grade MSWW and above can access the help of the technical advice team.
Technical advice does not extend to affiliate members, who should instead seek advice from their full member in the first instance. If the full member is unable to answer and requires the assistance of the technical advice team, they can of course send the question onto them and relay the answer back to the affiliate.
To ensure you can continue to receive technical advice, it is important to ensure your Society membership is active and up to date.
How can I go about getting the technical advice?
If you would like some advice from our technical advice team, please submit your query to them via email to [email protected]. Please be advised for insurance purposes they are only able to provide written advice, as such no advice will be given over the phone and if you call and ask for technical advice, you will not be put through to an advisor. This is for both their and your protection. The technical team’s inbox is monitored between 9am-5pm Monday – Thursday and 9am-4pm on Friday.
Once the technical advice team have received your query, they will conduct any necessary research and aim to provide you with a written response in 2 working days. Please note: this timeframe resets following each subsequent response. They do aim to respond to all queries within the same day where possible, however due to the high number of queries received daily, please allow for the full time for a response. If they receive a complex query, it is likely that it may take them a little longer to respond while they undertake any research so please do be patient. If your query is urgent please do advise them, but only do so when there is a genuine need for urgency.
When sending your query to the technical advice team, you must provide as much information as possible in your email. All advice and recommendations given by the technical advice team can only be based upon the information they receive, so providing all the necessary information up front ensures that the advice is given promptly and is correct. If all information relevant to the query has not been provided to them, they cannot accept any liability if the advice given is not suitable.
What can I get advice on?
If you want to seek advice on Wills, LPAs, trusts, or the Sure Will Writer software, they can help no matter how small or large your query is. The Society’s stance is that it is better to ask than not, even if you would just like a second opinion on a case to provide you with some assurance. For a comprehensive list of the things that can be advised on, please see the Technical Advice page in the members area.
We do need to remind you that whilst they can give basic tax advice, they are not tax advisors and therefore where your query is heavily tax based, we would advise you refer to your query to a financial advisor who will be better placed to assist you.
Sure Will Writer – Professional Will Suite
If you are a user of our software Sure Will Writer, you are entitled to receive technical advice and support on using the software. You can access this support easily via the software by reading through the user manuals, or by clicking ‘Request Help’, both of which can be found under the support tab. If requesting help, please provide as much information related to your query or issue and allow for a response within the usual 2-working day timeframe. Often where it concerns Sure Will Writer, responses are delivered much quicker as we understand that if you’re requesting help through the software, it’s because you need the support at that time. Only where there is an issue requiring developer input there may be a delay.
