Good call! I have nowt of real value bar my bikes 🙂
[i]Hope you don’t mind me asking Worldclassaccident, but you are okay, aren’t you?[/i]
Yes, I am fine. Just had a little near death thingy that reminded me I really ought to get round to writing a will. Nothing serious but thanks for the concern, I hope I continue to inspire as an example* to others.
*of just how wrong things can go
+1 having a will WHEN you have a child, as in WHEN it is born
And +1 of just do it properly, if you've kids they won't thank you for trying to sort out a shoddy Will.
To add to the best bits - if you're leaving a house in your Will to more than one person, say it should be sold and the proceeds divided, not just left as a part of the Estate. My OH had an issue when her Dad died as her brother was living in his house (he'd moved into a rented supported flat). Took ages to get him to even agree to let the Estate Agent in etc. Her Mum then changed her Will to state that her house should be sold and the monies divided.
Honestly never really thought about a will. Married, 3 (now grown up) children. If we all die together then its not something we need to worry about, if just I die then then they can sort it out.
Are there any stats on the number of people who have a will vs don't?
We've got a Will but it needs modifying as our daughter is now over 18.
What would you do in this situation to protect our daughters inheritance?...
If my wife or myself were to pass away and then surviving partner enter a new relationship how could we stop our daughters inheritance being diluted. At the minute she is our sole beneficiary (barring a few minor gifts to neices), and would gain a tidy chunk that could set her up nicely.
I'm thinking if either were to re-marry and new partner also had children - how could we prevent money from our estate passing to other people?
@the-muffin-man it is possible but also complicates matters, best to consult a solicitor if that is a concern. As a blended family with 5 kids between us we looked into doing this but in the end decided we needed to trust each other (yes I know 🙄) as the alternative would leave the remaining partner tied up in legalities for the rest of their lives. In the end I just elected how my pensions would be divided up in the event of my death just to make sure that my boys at least got something.
A couple of folk on here appear to be experts / write wills?
If so any want to do mine? Fees might as well go to an STWer as my lawyer
You can just name your daughter as a beneficiary in your will! That way she gets a bit for sure, and perhaps at an age that it might be some use to her rather than waiting until she's 60 and inheriting a second house that she has no use for.
(Did I mention, the vast majority of inherited wealth passes *to* rich homeowners in their 50s and 60s?)
I'm single with no offspring, what happens if I go? I have parents, sister and her 2 sons (my nephews), does the estate etc automatically pass to them as next of kin or should I get something written up? thanks
This pretty much explains route if intestate - in your case your parents.
Thanks, will have a read
I think the best advice is pay an expert
Regarding giving money to charities I've always been told it is best to give a percentage.
The reason being financial situations can go up or down and when the person made the will the amount stipulated for charity may have seemed reasonable then, but at the time of their death the value of their estate may have decreased, and if the stipulated charity amount is near to what the whole estate is worth (or even larger than it), it may leave other beneficiaries/ dependents at a financial loss. If the charity amount is a percentage it will increase or decrease with the size of the estate.
I'm no expert though and the above is probably oversimplified. As Dickyboy says the exact wording is important, so best talking to an expert.
We’ve got a Will but it needs modifying as our daughter is now over 18.
This is good point. I'll have to look at mine and see if it's still applicable
how could we prevent money from our estate passing to other people?
I suspect it'd be difficult to draft, prone to challenge and as said, you should probably let your offspring make their own choices.
I think the best advice is pay an expert
Just as a balance to all the people saying to use a solicitor as it saves all the hassle.
My mum got billed just less than £30k by her new soli to unwind the PoS will that their previous soli had done for the pair of them.
Regarding giving money to charities I’ve always been told it is best to give a percentage.
For the sake of your executors, unless they have great value please specifically exclude the house contents from the % you distribute.
I'm currently considering buying the entire contents of my friends house rather than selling it off piece meal & having to account for every £ to the beneficiaries, this will give me much more flexibility to distribute his chattels as I think he would have wanted, but I am only in the position to be able to do this because I am also a beneficiary & shouldn't lose out in the long run even if I gave it all away. All this ball ache for something like 1% of the total value of his estate.
Apologies for the rant, it's just a fairly raw subject at the moment.
A couple of folk on here appear to be experts / write wills?
If so any want to do mine? Fees might as well go to an STWer as my lawyer
TJ - make sure they are appropriate to do a Scottish well. Not suggesting anyone here would be unscrupulous enough to take your money when they are not expert to do it, but there are plenty of people around who will either not realise you live in Scotland, forget its a different legal system, or suggest that the differences are so small as to be insignificant. (They may be insignificant depending on your estate/intent - but by the time they've found that out one of you has investing time/money).
Note only the ink signed original is a valid legal document. Without that you are intestate. So, proper storage is a must.
I'd suggest that at least as important as proper storage is that other people (those most likely to be dealing with your affairs) know where to find it, and that if it is updated that you either keep using the same place or make sure those people know of the change and destroy the old ones - friend recently was well through the process of administering their mum's estate based on the Will which they had known about in their mum's "beaurea" all their life - and only when they happened to list the house on the market with the local solicitor their mother used when buying the property did they discover that she had lodged a new will with them when she bought the house. The terms were not massively different, but it could have been a real mess if say the executors were different or the instructions were massively different and had they used a different solicitor they would never have known and could have been really messy.
I'd also be very surprised if the courts would not accept say a scanned copy of a document which has been lost in a fire/flood as evidence of the original intent.
Good point Poly! No one has volunteered anyway
the timing of this is weird as I literally am in the middle of writing mine! I've picked up some good tips I will use
@Dickyboy, why not just get a house clearer to sell the lot and distribute the proceeds? Would save yourself a whole lot of hassle. Do people really want lots of individual items of non-trivial value? You can quite legitimately pass chattels on (within the constraints of the will) if it's important for personal reasons, just put down a realistic value and no-one will challenge. If there's a dispute over that, auction the lot and they can bid for whatever they want, that's surely a fair solution.
It's your friend who didn't bother writing a proper will, don't beat yourself up too much trying to fix his laziness/incompetence.
I’d also be very surprised if the courts would not accept say a scanned copy of a document which has been lost in a fire/flood as evidence of the original intent.
No they won't. Too easy to tamper with a copy and alter the will in someone's favour maliciously. It MUST be the ink-signed original otherwise you are intestate. As I say I have a professional interest and knowledge of all of this and lose the original and you're stuffed.
@thecaptain it's a complicated situation that I'm not prepared to explain on a public forum.
It’s your friend who didn’t bother writing a proper will, don’t beat yourself up too much trying to fix his laziness/incompetence.
He did write a will but left % to charities & other beneficiarys but some of the items I know he wanted various people to have, so I'd rather buy them off the estate and gift them to the people concerned, than involve a house clearance co.
Well he should have written his will accordingly, there are plenty of clear descriptions of how to do it on the internet and any competent solicitor would have been able to help.
Yes he should but I'm guessing staring down the barrel of incurable cancer at the time didn't make that a top priority.
Anyway all I've tried to illustrate why it's best to exclude house contents/possessions if you are planning on leaving % to beneficiarys, so that other people don't make the same mistake.
Bit harsh that. (edit - the captain, sorry that last reply was inserted as I read. You're doing an admirable thing for your mate Dickyboy )
Yes sorry I realised my post would have seemed a bit harsh but FFS that's precisely why you shouldn't wait until you are dying before writing a will! My relative spent 6 months in denial and then the last couple of weeks high on drugs and never got theirs finished as a result, causing years of delay and thousands of pounds of costs and stress.
So wife and I don’t have one, and it’s been on the list for a long time. Kids are 5 & 7
Only people who we would trust to look after our children are my wife’s parents, and they are in their early 70s. Healthy at the moment but ageing. What is the alternative for families without support? Are they taken into care? Can you specifiy what happens (like they must not be split up?)
Not something I really want to think about, hence it never gets done
Did mine at a solicitors, two meetings and £400 later:
'You have requested a cremation, any other requests or stipulations?'
'Yes, I should like it very hot.'
'I'm sorry , Sir?'
Actually, I don't think it's been mentioned before, if anyone is planning on doing this.
Some charities offer will writing as a service, free at the point of use but obviously you're expected to leave a bequest for them in there. Also, if you're in a trade union, they have legal teams that generally do it free or at low cost as a member perk.
I started getting wills drafted up for myself and my partner, then aborted the process as my money ran out. The fees were running to over a grand. Looking at the prices some people are quoting here, was I being ripped off?
depends how complex it is and how much you did yourself. You would be writing two wills
I'm going to write mine up in detail as its fairly complex and then to a lawyer for making sure its legal
No they won’t. Too easy to tamper with a copy and alter the will in someone’s favour maliciously. It MUST be the ink-signed original otherwise you are intestate. As I say I have a professional interest and knowledge of all of this and lose the original and you’re stuffed.
I am in no doubt that an "original" is best, I'm not convinced you are right that in its absence the answer is always that copies will always be dismissed by the court. The logic that a scanned copy could be manipulated but a paper copy could not is probably a little naive. Indeed if you want to stop people tampering with original paper documents one of the most effective things you can do is to take and share electronic copies. Certainly, the veracity of an electronic document is likely to come under scrutiny (although it should with any paper document too - its quite feasible to tamper with a paper document - especially one where the witnesses would not have read the details and may themselves now be deceased) - but my expectation is the court is more interested in whether the absence of the original is because the deceased intentionally destroyed it or because it was lost in supposedly safe storage. That may depend on the circumstances presented to the court for why a copy exists, who had that copy and why the original is not available.
https://www.ralstonssolicitors.co.uk/blog/can-i-use-a-photocopy-will-if-i-cant-find-the-original
https://www.tmsolicitors.co.uk/probate-problems/is-a-photocopy-of-a-will-still-valid/
indeed the Law Society of Scotland says declaring there is no will when you know a copy of a will exists would probably be the wrong thing to do: https://www.lawscot.org.uk/members/journal/issues/vol-63-issue-12/lost-will-what-then/
I wasn't aiming to get into a long argument though - keep your original safe and make sure those who need to, know where to find it, is by far the best advice.
I think we paid 150 to get new ones a few years ago, not sure if that was for both of us or each. Very common to get a cheap fixed-fee service but I'm sure standard hourly lawyer rates could be a lot higher if you have a lot to discuss.
As said, I would pay someone to do it but even then issues may happen.
my parents did a very simple will with a solicitor (Scotland) so if either died everything went to the other. If both died it was to be split between my sister and myself. When my dad died 2 years ago there was some issue with the house going to my mum. Apparently my dads ‘half’ had to be split 50% to my mum and 25% to my sister and myself? Some old law/deeds issue from the early 70s I believe (my mum and sister sorted it all, as I am abroad, I just signed where I was told to). My sister and I were going to sign our ‘share’ back to my mum but in the end my mum said not to bother due to costs and it may help with inheritance tax down the line. So even simple wills with a solicitor can have issues.
which reminds me I need to get a will!
Best to pay extra for the crem de la crem to avoid inter family squabbles.
This stuff is right in my wheelhouse. Full disclosure I own Will & Probate Services www.will-probate.co.uk
As far as writing a Will goes, you can do you own if your affairs are very simple. In the OP's situation the biggest risk is the sideways disinheritance thing - he dies, spouse remarries (which would revoke her Will (S18 Wills Act 1837)) she the dies and the new spouse (wicked step father/ step mother) cops the lot. Lot's of people see this as a real risk and drawing up a professional Will can avoid this.
The probate registry do require the original Will in order to grant probate, there are very few situations where a copy of a Will can be admitted to probate. The starting presumption when trying to prove a copy of a Will is the presumption of revocation by destruction - i.e. that the person who wrote the Will decided that it was no longer appropriate and destroyed it. Anyone putting forward a copy will have to prove to the satisfaction of the courts that this was not the case. We all know how hard it is to prove a negative, especially when the only person who knew the real answer is dead.
Family squabbles and disputes are regular, but that said claims that progress to court are mercifully rare. This is because the grounds to challenge a Will and the people who can challenge are laid down in law and are surprisingly limited. Claims that a Will is invalid are notoriously hard to prove. It is also crucifyingly expensive to get the initial claim in front of a judge for a preliminary hearing and if you go to a full trial it is really easy to spend more than the estate value in legal fees to arrive at a judgement.
Most claims and disputes are families airing old grudges, or a kite flying exercise by someone trying to extract a settlement from the named beneficiaries. As such most are settled by a few solicitors letters and in some cases mediation.
If any one wants to chat through any specific questions I am always happy to help just drop me a message. I have been lucky enough to help a few members in the past.
re: marriage invalidating wills.
My partner and I wrote wills a few years ago and then got married in the meantime, does this mean that our wills are invalid?
@t3ap0t It might do. It depends if you had an anticipation of marriage clause inserted into the will when you wrote it. S18 Wills act 1837 says that a Will is revoked by a subsequent marriage unless there is a clause anticipating the marriage.
It would typically say something like -
'Contemplation of Marriage
I expect to marry my partner Miss XXX of 123 The Street, Anytown, AA1 1AA, and want this Will to stay in force after our marriage'
If that or something along those lines is in it then you are OK, if not you need to redo the Wills.
Can you refuse to accept something that has been gifted to you in a will and if so what happens to it?
An example might help.
I decide to buy a hippopotamus and then leave it to my sister in my will. When I die, for no explicable reason, my unreasonable and ungrateful sister doesn't want an adult male hippo in her house, can she refuse? If she does, who looks after Arnold (the hippo)?
Yes you can refuse a bequest (or part, eg "I'll have the zebra but not the hippo"). It goes into the residue to be distributed accordingly. Or you could write a deed of variation and pass it on to someone else.
My partner and I wrote wills a few years ago and then got married in the meantime, does this mean that our wills are invalid?
Unless they have been rescinded or replaced no they will still be valid but may need updating.
This is even more important of you get divorced for eg and re-marry as the old will is still the valid one so your ex may inherit everything much to the chagrin of your current spouse.
I try and keep our wills updated every 10 years or so - in effect, around every 15 years then.
I'm probably an outlier in having a will since I was about 21 (on account of advice from a relative I thought well of). Use the expressions of wish part heavily, as well as additional codices along the way - in particular when the children were in that 16-21 age range when if we died, things would be pretty sticky.
Both kinds of powers of attorney in place for as long as I can recall.
Can't recall if the charities are in proportion or amounts. I was executor for my mum's will, but appointed jointly with the solicitors, who did a power of stuff in getting everything sorted. I did the more mundane admin. stuff.
TBH TJ, if you feel like sending more cash to relatives in feeling it's not your cash, I'd crack on - you're the arbiter of taste and judgement really, and I'm sure Julie would have approved I suspect.
I decide to buy a hippopotamus and then leave it to my sister in my will.
Oh I like that idea. What awkward bequests can one make? this could be fun Or conditions attached - you only get your inheritance if you turn up at my funeral drunk and naked HMmmm 🙂
I decide to buy a hippopotamus and then leave it to my sister in my will.
This reflects the derivation of the term "white elephant". If somebody gave you a white elephant, as a sacred animal you couldn't refuse it, and equally, couldn't neglect it it, so it would cost you a fortune in feed and housing.
you only get your inheritance if you turn up at my funeral drunk and naked
I'm just relieved my mate never entertained such a suggestion 🤣 as an example of his "character" he used to live in a mobile home at the bottom of a railway embankment, so he bought a manikin, sat her in a tin bath on his roof and dressed her as he saw fit every month or so to entertain the commuters.
It's great that multiple people who know what they are talking about can answer questions correctly several times over and others will still pipe up with nonsense.
I started getting wills drafted up for myself and my partner, then aborted the process as my money ran out. The fees were running to over a grand. Looking at the prices some people are quoting here, was I being ripped off?
Sounds expensive, I'd expect maybe £3-400 per will for a straight forward will. The reason it's more expensive than a DIY will is that the solicitor should give you both a proper 'interview' as to your wishes, and insert clauses accordingly.
They will ask questions that are not immediatley apparent, such as what if the remaining spouse re-marries etc.
A 'boiler plate' will won't cover that.
For example I'm unmarried and childless, so if I die without a will, I belive my remaining uncle would inherit the lot, sounds simple right?
But where does the inheritence go if he's dead? his closest of kin? his new wife or new wifes ofspring...
but in that case I might want to give something or much more to my niece on the other side of the family, who wouldn't automaticaly get anything.
Then if I marry without updating my will, my new wife would automatically get the lot upon my death, which may or may not be what I want, for example, she could re-marry in which case I'd want her to get nothing, and the estate go to my next of kin/ and/or named beneficeries, like friends, local cattery or whatever.
