The new version of Find a Will, the government’s website for ordering English and Welsh probate records, appears to have records missing and has been criticised by users.
Find a Will allows family historians to purchase copies of probate records from 1858, when the present system of civil probate was introduced, for £1.50 each.
Between 24 January and 8 February the website was down, with an error message saying it was “under maintenance”. The date when it was due to be restored was repeatedly changed.
On 8 February the website was restored, with a different design.
For example, the homepage previously offered the option to search for records from 1858 to 1996, records from 1996 to the present, or soldiers’ wills.
However, it now simply asks users to enter the individual’s surname and date of death and say whether they were a soldier who died while serving.
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On social media, family historians with pre-existing accounts on the website complained that the new version of the website rejected their password and required them to set up a new one. They also found that probate records they’d previously purchased were not available to view, and that records they knew existed could not be found using the website’s search function.
On Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine’s Facebook page, Alison Forrest commented: “I can sign in (after changing the password) but the will I should have had available is nowhere to be seen – very frustrating.”
Simon Golding said: “The site is back up… but you can’t login, password reset doesn’t work, and a search (even for a will I know exists, because I’ve got a copy) turns up no results.”
To discover how many records were missing, Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine compared the lists of wills now available on Find a Will with the Probate Calendars available on Ancestry.
Probate Calendars were produced annually and listed all those who left a will, or who died intestate but with an estate that had to be administered, in alphabetical order.
Comparing random years and letters showed that pages of records were missing, suggesting that large numbers of records now cannot be found on Find a Will.
These included pages of individuals with surnames beginning with R who died in 1869, individuals with surnames beginning with D who died in 1870 and individuals with surnames beginning with C who died in 1916. Before the website update, these records were all available on Find a Will.
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The Ministry of Justice, which is responsible for the Find a Will website, did not respond to a request for comment.