Terms written to be read, not buried.

These are the terms on which Valoren, through its case-work desk Signum, takes on your matter. The ones that matter most — what we do and do not do, who you pay for what, your 14-day right to cancel, and where a complaint goes — are stated up front, in plain language, as the Consumer Rights Act 2015 requires.

Last updated: 4 October 2026 · under review

This is the version worth reading first. Everything below it is the formal expression of these five promises — nothing in the formal clauses cuts against them.

Signum is Valoren's case-work desk, and Valoren is not a law firm. In these terms "Valoren", "we" and "us" mean Valoren, the business whose desk Signum is; "you" means the person or executors who instruct us; "the firm" means the separate regulated firm named in your written quote; and "your agreement" means the written agreement you sign with Valoren. Valoren is not regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority or any other legal regulator, and nothing on this site, or anything we say, is to be read as a claim that it is. Where our pages say "Signum", the agreement is with Valoren. Every family that instructs Signum has come to us of its own accord; we do not cold-call, buy lists or approach the bereaved, and no firm we work with does so on our behalf.

On an estate we do the groundwork; we do not prepare or submit the probate application or any tax account. We find every account, policy, pension and debt, write to each institution and chase the replies, value what there is, and set it all out in one schedule of figures, in our own format, which you check and confirm. After the grant arrives we help you collect what is owed, settle what is due and distribute what remains. Wills, lasting powers of attorney and record-keeping are work we may do ourselves, and we do. Preparing the papers that go to the Probate Registry is reserved legal work. By law only a regulated firm may do it for a fee, and Valoren is not one. So a separate regulated firm, named in your written quote, prepares and submits the application and any IHT400, carries out its own identity checks and answers to its own regulator for that work. You sign the application yourselves, as executors.

You can start with a free 20-minute call, or by sending us an enquiry from this site. On the call we tell you which parts of the work Signum would do, which part a regulated firm must do by law, and what each part is likely to cost, with the court fee on top. An enquiry comes straight to us, and we reply by email. Neither costs anything or commits you to anything, and no payment is taken, and no card details are stored, before you have signed your agreement. Enquiries and booked calls are open now; estate work starts only once the written quote, from both Valoren and the firm, is agreed. Nothing said before you sign is advice you can act on: on an estate, questions of law — whether a grant is needed, what tax is due, how a will is to be read — are for the regulated firm, under its own agreement with you.

For an estate you sign two written agreements, never one. The first is with Valoren, for the groundwork Signum does itself. The second is with a separate regulated firm, for the probate application and, where one is needed, the inheritance tax account. The firm is named in your written quote. Both agreements, with both prices, are put in front of you before you commit to either, and you can take either one without the other. The firm decides for itself whether to act, and it may decline: after its identity checks, because of a conflict, or because the estate needs a specialist. If it does, what you owe the firm, if anything, is set by the firm's own terms; Signum's schedule of figures and correspondence file belong to you and go with you to any other regulated firm you choose.

There are two bills because there are two agreements. You pay Valoren for Signum's groundwork, under our agreement with you. You pay the firm for the application, directly, on the firm's own terms and its own invoice. Valoren never collects, holds or passes on the firm's fee, the court fee or any tax. Nothing you pay us goes to the firm, and nothing you pay the firm comes to us. Our own fee is invoiced in the stages set out in your agreement; where a payment on account is asked for before work begins, your agreement says how much, and when the balance is due.

A payment on account is a payment towards our own fee and nothing else. It is not client money and it is not held for the firm. It is applied to our fee as work is done, and your refund rights in §5 apply to it in full until it has been earned by work actually and properly done. Dormancy is not forfeiture; cancellation is not forfeiture. Valoren keeps only the value of work actually and properly carried out.

The balance is due within 14 calendar days of our invoice. If it is not paid, we send one written reminder giving a further 14 days. After that we may pause our part of the work until it is paid, and recover the debt with statutory interest. If you cannot pay in full, tell us before the balance is overdue and we will try to agree a written payment plan; it does not reduce what you owe. We never withhold original documents you gave us, registered LPAs or court orders, and we never withhold anything the firm needs to meet a court or HMRC deadline.

A payment dispute never extinguishes your rights. If you raise a formal complaint (§10), the overdue-balance escalation is paused until the complaint is resolved. For consumer clients, all recovery steps follow the applicable consumer-protection frameworks — no pressure tactics, and these consequences are set out in your agreement before you sign, never sprung at completion.

If a card payment is reversed after work has begun, we treat it as non-payment, not as a refund. We pause further work and respond to the reversal with our agreement and evidence of the work carried out — only what is needed to show the agreement and the work, checked against your payment provider's own data-protection commitments. A reversal does not replace your right to a refund under §5 — if you believe you are owed money back, that route stays open to you regardless.

Nothing is paid for introductions, in either direction: no referral fee, no commission, nothing in kind. The firm pays us nothing for sending you to it; we pay the firm nothing for taking you on. Valoren's only income from your estate is its own fee, paid by you under our agreement. You are free to use any regulated firm you prefer for the application; our part does not depend on which.

If you are a consumer and your agreement with Valoren is made at a distance or away from our premises, you have 14 days to cancel it, starting the day after the agreement is made. You do not need to give a reason. Any clear statement that you wish to cancel is enough — we provide a model cancellation form, but you are never required to use it. This right comes from the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013. It applies to our agreement only; the firm's agreement has its own cancellation terms.

You can ask us to start work before the 14 days end. Many clients do, because a deadline is close. If so, we ask for it as an express written request — an email is sufficient — and we explain, before we begin, that you keep your right to cancel during the 14 days, but if you then cancel you pay a fair amount for the work actually and properly done up to that moment, and the rest of anything you paid on account comes back. If a service is fully performed within the period at your express request, and you acknowledged that the cancellation right is lost on full performance, the cooling-off right no longer applies to that service — and we will never treat a service as "fully performed" to defeat your cancellation right unless it genuinely is.

What is refundable depends on one thing: whether work has begun. "Work begins" means the first substantive step after you sign your agreement — a letter to an institution, a valuation request, the start of the schedule, or drafting. It does not include the free call, your enquiry, or an acknowledgement. Refunds are made by the same method you paid, within 14 days of falling due.

Business clients are not covered by the statutory cooling-off right; their cancellation terms are set out in their agreement. Even then, any deduction must be reasonable, itemised, and linked to work actually performed — the absence of a statutory right does not entitle Valoren to keep an unearned payment on account.

While a matter is active and we are waiting on you, we follow a defined reminder cadence — we tell you what we need and why it matters. Nothing is forfeited for slow replies. Any payment on account is applied only to work actually done.

Where we show an estate price, we show the whole cost. Consistent with the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, an estimate on our pages or on the call is the estimated total of both agreements together, with the firm's typical share stated beside ours and the court fee shown as extra. It is an estimate, not an offer and not a price you pay; your written quote replaces it. No drip-pricing: we never advertise our part alone as if it were the whole. Never a percentage of the estate; never an hourly meter.

Valoren is not registered for VAT. No VAT is added to Signum's fee and none is hidden inside it; the figure we quote is the figure you pay us. The firm's fee may include VAT. If Valoren's VAT position changes, we will say so in writing before any new agreement, and a fee we have agreed never increases because of it. The court charges its own fee for a probate application: £526 in England and Wales where the estate is worth more than £5,000, and nothing where it is worth £5,000 or less. It is paid on top of both fees, either by you directly or on the firm's invoice under the firm's terms. It never passes through Valoren, and we never mark it up or hold it.

Services are supplied with reasonable care and skill. That standard comes from the Consumer Rights Act 2015, cannot be excluded, and overrides anything inconsistent in these terms. The firm's work is held to its regulator's standards as well, under its agreement with you. We will not rely on any term that creates a significant imbalance against you.

Signum uses a confirmation-to-renew model: no standing payment authority is taken at engagement. For any recurring service, a renewal notice is sent to your registered email no fewer than 28 days before the renewal date, stating the renewal price (including any step from a first-year price), when renewal occurs, and how to decline. The service renews only on your express confirmation — never by silence, never by a pre-ticked box. If you do not confirm, the service lapses.

Renewal is not review. A renewal keeps a service live; it does not, by itself, mean we have re-reviewed, re-checked, or re-advised on your situation. Any actual review is a distinct, separately-described activity — never implied by the act of renewing. We state this plainly at every renewal.

Valoren is the data controller for the personal data you give us on the call, in your enquiry and during your matter. You have the full set of UK GDPR rights — access, rectification, erasure, restriction, objection, portability, and withdrawal of consent. Your figures and documents go to the regulated firm only when you tell us in writing to send them, and only to the firm named in your quote. We ask for that consent separately, in writing, before anything is sent, and we send only what the application needs. From then on Valoren and the firm each hold their own records and each answers for its own; neither acts for the other, and neither is the other's processor. You can ask for your file, or its deletion, at any time; where the law requires us to keep a record, we tell you what and for how long.

Be clear about what protects you. Signum is Valoren's case-work desk. Valoren is not a law firm, is not regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority or anyone else, and our part of the work is not covered by the Legal Ombudsman, a compensation fund or professional indemnity rules for lawyers. The regulated firm's part is: its regulator sets its standards, and the Legal Ombudsman can hear a complaint about its work. What you tell us may not be protected by legal professional privilege in the way your dealings with the firm are. A complaint about Signum's work comes to Valoren, in writing, and is answered in writing by a named person. A complaint about the firm's work goes to the firm under its own complaints procedure, and after that to the Legal Ombudsman. We will always tell you plainly which of us a complaint belongs to.

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, under the non-exclusive jurisdiction of its courts. Estate work under these terms is for estates in England and Wales. Scotland and Northern Ireland have different law, forms and fees; tell us, and we will say in writing whether we can help. If you are a consumer habitually resident in another jurisdiction, you retain the protection of any mandatory consumer-law rights of your home country that cannot be contracted out of. Nothing in these terms removes or limits your statutory rights under the Consumer Rights Act 2015, the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013, the DMCCA 2024, or any other applicable consumer-protection law.

Ready to talk it through?

Starting is free and commits you to nothing. Send us an enquiry and we reply by email, or ask for a free 20-minute call. We tell you which parts Signum would do, which part a regulated firm must do, and what each is likely to cost — with the court fee on top.