By RICHARD BRADDELL
The Law Society and the Public Trust have come to blows over a bill that the Law Society claims would entrench the trust's competitive advantage over lawyers in writing wills.
The society says that if proposals to subsidise the Public Trust's free will service with taxpayer money go ahead, it should be confined to preparing them for people of limited means.
The Public Trust spends millions of dollars each year providing free wills, often recouping costs only years later through fees from administering estates under a mandatory condition of writing the wills.
A restructuring bill before Parliament would remove anomalies faced by the Public Trust, such as being unable to charge fees on investment funds, and could lead to taxpayers meeting the cost of free wills.
The bill, which would make the organisation look more like a state-owned enterprise, would also result in the Public Trustee's replacement by a chief executive.
The Law Society has cried foul over free wills and other non-commercial services requested by the Crown being paid for by public money.
A front page devoted to the Public Trust in this month's LawTalk, the society's newsletter, said the free will service, in which the Public Trust must be named as executor, already confers an unfair competitive advantage over lawyers.
And in submissions to the Finance and Expenditure select committee, the Law Society said a crown guarantee of Public Trust funds could give it a significant advantage, particularly in areas such as conveyancing, since lawyers and licensed conveyancers would have to contribute to a fidelity fund while the Public Trust would have the backing of the cost-free crown guarantee.
But the Public Trust's general manager marketing, Trevor Hockley, said the Law Society was reacting to the success of its recent branding campaign.
He rejected the society's argument to the select committee that the Public Trust's administration charges were expensive compared to lawyers', dismissing a society survey as statistically too small.
He also said lawyers did only part of the work the Public Trust did in winding up an estate since they usually relied on unpaid family members and friends to administer it.
In contrast, the Public Trust brought professional administration to those estates, for which it charged.
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