Areas covered

Will writing, LPAs and probate in Aylesford

Personal, professional estate planning across Aylesford, Larkfield and the Medway valley villages — at your kitchen table, on your schedule.

Aylesford is an old village on a bend of the Medway just north-west of Maidstone, now the centre of a band of settlements running up the valley towards Snodland and Halling. From my base I regularly visit clients in Larkfield, Ditton, East Malling, Snodland, Eccles, Burham, and Blue Bell Hill. The signing visit is included in the quoted price wherever you are on that list — there's no extra travel charge for the smaller villages.

I'm Emma Wrigley — a law graduate with over 20 years in the legal sector — and I set up Kent Legacy Planning because estate planning should fit around your life, not the other way around. The conversations I have with clients happen mostly on the phone, at whatever time of day suits you, and the signing happens over a cup of tea at your own kitchen table — evenings and weekends if that's what works, with no office visits and no rushed appointments.

Services available in Aylesford

Every fee is quoted in writing before you commit, and will and LPA prices include a signing visit to your home in Aylesford or the surrounding villages.

Wills & related documents

Powers of attorney & health decisions

Probate & estate administration

Other documents

Mirror Wills for Aylesford couples and families

Aylesford is where I live. The valley I’d be driving across for a mirror-wills appointment — the estates at Larkfield and Ditton, the lanes running up through East Malling, the newer housing at Snodland — is my own patch rather than a postcode on a map. It’s also a young patch. The Medway valley commuter corridor has filled up over the last few decades with owner-occupied family housing, and the couples who bought it are typically in their thirties and forties, with a mortgage, small children, and no will between them.

Mirror wills are two individual wills, one for each partner, drafted at the same time so that they mirror one another: each of you leaves everything to the survivor, and on the second death it passes to the children. It’s the arrangement most couples assume they already have simply by being together. They don’t. Without a will, the intestacy rules decide instead — and those rules rarely produce the outcome a family here would expect, particularly where the couple aren’t married or where there are children from an earlier relationship. Mirror wills are usually the first estate-planning document a young family needs, and they’re straightforward to put in place.

They matter most for:

  • Couples with young children, who need a guardianship appointment naming the person who would raise them. It’s the clause parents care about above all others, and the one a supermarket will kit most often gets wrong.
  • Couples with a mortgaged family home, where life cover clears the mortgage on the first death and turns what felt like a modest estate into a substantial one overnight.
  • Unmarried couples living together, who inherit nothing automatically from one another however long they’ve been a couple — for them a will isn’t tidying up, it’s the only protection there is.

The fee is a single fixed price for the pair — drafting both wills from one set of instructions costs less than commissioning them separately, and it’s what makes the two documents agree rather than contradict each other. It covers the whole process: a free phone consultation to talk through your circumstances and give you a firm quote, then a detailed questionnaire and as many follow-up calls as it takes to get your instructions right, careful drafting for your actual situation rather than a template, and a signing appointment at your home in Aylesford, Larkfield or wherever suits you, with proper witnessing. A letter of wishes for each of you can be prepared alongside the wills for a small additional fee, and there’s no separate travel charge anywhere in the catchment. Plenty of couples add Lasting Powers of Attorney at the same time — Aylesford village skews older than the surrounding estates and I do a lot of LPA work locally for parents and in-laws — and if you want the wills and both LPAs together, the Complete Peace of Mind Package covers everything in one process, and I’ll quote you for it on the same phone call.

Questions from Aylesford clients

Which villages around Aylesford do you cover?

I cover Aylesford itself and the settlements around it, including Larkfield, Ditton, East Malling, Snodland, Eccles, Burham, and Blue Bell Hill. Most of these are a few minutes' drive from me rather than a trip across the county, and there's no additional travel charge for any of them — the signing visit is included in the quoted price, whether you're up on Blue Bell Hill or down by the river at Eccles. If you're just outside that list, ring me anyway. I cover Kent and East Sussex more widely, and I'll tell you straight away on the phone whether I can help and what it would cost.

Why mirror wills rather than two separate single wills?

Mirror wills are two individual wills, one for each of you, drafted together so they say the same thing in reverse — everything to the survivor, then to the children. Doing them at the same time means one set of instructions, one conversation, and one fee for the pair rather than two separate fees. It also means the documents actually agree with one another. When couples write wills years apart, I regularly find conflicting guardianship appointments or executors who are no longer on speaking terms. Each will still belongs to you alone, and either of you can change yours later if circumstances shift.

Do you offer evening or weekend appointments in Aylesford?

Yes — I work seven days a week, including evenings, and there's no extra charge for an out-of-hours appointment. I'm based in Aylesford myself, so an eight o'clock visit in Larkfield or Ditton is a short drive rather than a long evening on the M20, and I'd far rather come to you once the children are in bed than have you take a morning off work. Weekends suit families in the valley particularly well, when both partners can sit down together properly without one of them leaving halfway through for the Maidstone commute.

We have young children — how does a guardianship clause work?

A guardianship clause appoints the person you'd want to raise your children if both parents died before the youngest turns eighteen. Without one, that decision falls to the courts, who have no way of knowing what you'd have chosen. It's the single most common reason younger couples around Aylesford and Larkfield finally get a will written. We'll talk through who you'd pick, whether they know, and what should happen if your first choice can't act — I'll draft a substitute appointment as a backstop. It's worth pairing with a letter of wishes covering schooling and family contact, prepared alongside your wills for a small additional fee.

I'm helping an elderly parent in Snodland or Burham — can you visit them at home?

Yes. We start with a free phone consultation, and the detail is gathered afterwards by questionnaire and phone, which spares an elderly parent a formal appointment — you're welcome to help them fill it in, as long as the answers are genuinely theirs. Then I come to them to sign, and that visit is part of the quoted price, so there's nothing extra for travelling to Snodland, Burham or anywhere else in the valley. Signing at their own kitchen table matters more than people expect, particularly for anyone with mobility difficulties or who'd find a formal office appointment daunting. If they'd rather meet me face to face before I draft anything, I can arrange that too — there's a separate consultation fee and I'll tell you what it is first. Family members are welcome to be present, and I'm happy to work around relatives travelling in from further afield.

What does it cost to get everything sorted in one go?

Most couples choose the Complete Peace of Mind Package — mirror wills, both types of LPA for both partners, and letters of wishes. That's six professionally drafted documents in one process, and it works out cheaper than arranging each piece separately. I'll give you the exact figure on our first phone call, and OPG registration fees are payable separately to the government.