Please make a Will

[Newportnobby]

In April 2023 one of my sisters collapsed and died right next to me, despite attempts to revive her. It was a huge shock, as you can imagine. However, that's by the by.  happens
Sadly, despite my advice, she left no will. In fact, any paperwork was lucky to be found.
My other sister and I had to seek everything out and then ensured she had, in fact, been divorced so we could apply for probate. The application for probate finally went in on 2nd November. It has only this week been granted although we have to wait for the official certificate before we can sell her property.
Please, think of your family and ensure you have a Will in place. It makes things so much easier for the folks who have to pick up the pieces and is certainly not age limited
Thank you

[Moonglum]

Totally agree Mick, good advice. Also having Lasting Power of Attorney (Finance and Welfare) is becoming essential as well. £82 per LPoA if you do it yourself.

Best wishes,

Tim

[Southerngooner]

Completely agree Mick. Also, be sure to keep any will updated. We are going to update ours soon as in our current will we have stipulations on personal effects and what to do with our ashes that were relevant twenty years ago when we made the will but don't reflect our wishes today.

Dave

[GrahamB]

Even havig a will doesn't guarentee peace of mind.

My moter passed away last October. She had a valid will. Her solicitor retired a couple of years earlier and passed everything to another company. That company got had an "intervention" by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. They recovered all records they could fine. 

When we asked them to do a search, they could find no record. Not keeping papers was, we discovered, why they got shut down. The SRA's advice was to seek legal advice!

We finally got limited probate which was enough to dispose of her estate. 

Yes, making a will is important. We now keep our wills at home.

[Bigmac]

i havent made a new will.  Apparently when i got married ( again !) 8 years ago--that negated any previous will.  My solicitor at that time told me that under English law, in the absence of a valid will my wife would get the first £250k of my estate.  So thats ok then.

During my lifetime i have had several different solicitors.  All gave various advices i can only describe as incompetent.

[Newportnobby]

Totally agree Mick, good advice. Also having Lasting Power of Attorney (Finance and Welfare) is becoming essential as well. £82 per LPoA if you do it yourself.

Best wishes,

Tim

@Moonglum Tim - I'm not sure LPoA comes into it as that ceases to exist on a person's death, as I discovered when my mother passed away the year before my sister. It's well worth obtaining with the consent of the person involved just in case they become incapable of making lucid decisions.

The reason I posted such a morbid subject is things are really dragging through the courts (unless you're a rioter) nowadays e.g. our Probate took 9 months and it's awful for the folks left behind to go that length of time with no closure

[njee20]

i havent made a new will.  Apparently when i got married ( again !) 8 years ago--that negated any previous will.  My solicitor at that time told me that under English law, in the absence of a valid will my wife would get the first £250k of my estate.  So thats ok then.

During my lifetime i have had several different solicitors.  All gave various advices i can only describe as incompetent.

Unless you die together... 'the legal status quo' isn't enough to mitigate having an up-to-date will IMO.

[Newportnobby]

My solicitor at that time told me that under English law, in the absence of a valid will my wife would get the first £250k of my estate.  So thats ok then.

During my lifetime i have had several different solicitors.  All gave various advices i can only describe as incompetent.

But are you sure your solicitor at the time of giving the advice was competent?

[Moonglum]

Mick @Newportnobby , I mentioned LPoA as we have a close and elderly relative now living in a care home and to cut a long story short having LPoA has proved invaluable to ensure their continued well-being etc. When they finally pop their clogs that will be another matter (no pun intended).

Tim

[Papyrus]

Agree wholeheartedly, Mick. If your will is simple, you don't need to employ a solicitor. You can buy ready-made will packs at stationers, or just write it out in simple but precise language. Make sure you nominate an executor and sign it in front of two independent witnesses. Make copies - keep one and give another to your executor. My wife and I have left everything to each other, or Blanche's sons (my stepsons) if we both pop off together. You can also lodge a will with the Probate Office where it will a) be safe and b) can be accessed quickly. Again, an executor doesn't need to employ a solicitor if the will is straightforward. For a couple of wills where I was executor I did it all myself. In contrast, when my grandma died, I wanted to deal with her estate myself, but the will was held by a solicitor who started the probate process without informing me. We had a bit of a discussion about that...

Cheers,

Chris

[zwilnik]

My solicitor at that time told me that under English law, in the absence of a valid will my wife would get the first £250k of my estate.  So thats ok then.

During my lifetime i have had several different solicitors.  All gave various advices i can only describe as incompetent.

But are you sure your solicitor at the time of giving the advice was competent?

Also, from what I understand after dealing with my father's estate after he passed without a will, anything above £10,000 has to go through a much longer process. So while she might get the money, it could take a lot longer than it needs to.

On a side note, if you're living overseas (even as a British Citizen), double check in case any local laws affect inheritance. In Spain for instance, in the absence of a Spanish will, banks will block joint accounts and all assets are frozen until you've gone through a very long and expensive legal process. This happened to a friend of ours last year after her husband died suddenly without making a proper Spanish will.

[Southerngooner]

When we lived in France we had to make new wills over there containing a Tontine clause. Had we not done that, then if one of us had died out there the estate wouldn't have automatically gone to the other as in the UK, it would have been split 50/50 between the surviving partner and our son. No wonder there are so many old buildings going to rot over there!

Dave

[Newportnobby]

When we lived in France we had to make new wills over there containing a Tontine clause.

Was that done through The Loan Arranger, Dave?

[Malc-c]

Strange that most people thing making a will only need to be done in one twilight years, when the reality is one should be made as soon as you reach adulthood IMO.

There is a service where you can store your will in a secure building which helps overcome the issues others have mentioned when solicitors close / merge or get taken over by larger organisations.

It is also essential to make new wills as life changes, such as through separation or divorce. Also as mentioned above, if after a divorce either or both parties remarry any existing will at the time is null and void form that point on.  But even having a will doesn't mean your partner will get everything should you die.  My cousin had some savings in an account and never got round to changing it into a joint account, or adding his partner as a signatory.  They never married in the decades they lived together and when he passed away in his early 50's, as everything else had been changed to joint names it all went to his partner, apart for the £30K in his savings.  Under the law that went to his next of kin, which were around 14 cousins.  Her solicitor spent ages tracking down each one (half are in other countries including USA, Canada and Australia) and once found and ID confirmed we were asked if we relinquished our claim to the share so application could be made through the courts on her behalf to claim the funds, which after cost for the time spent tracing us all down resulted in less than half the initial amount being received.

On a personal note we not long changed our wills as me and the misses are separated, and once the house has been done up (delayed due to my poor health at the moment) and gets sold, we should have enough equity for each of us to buy a small flat or bungalow up North.  Our wills now state that each of the three grown up kids get equal shares of our own properties.

I've also prepared a pack of notes for my kids to help them contact all the organisations or creditors and have all the account numbers etc to hand.  I've also written out a last post message and instructed them to cut and paste it on the forums I frequent, which will help prevent friends worrying where I've gone and stop any speculation.  I did this as one day a guy that I would convers with via 20 or more emails a day just stopped replying one afternoon.  Despite my best efforts I have no idea what happened, but as all his post on forums stopped can only speculate that something tragic happened and he's no longer with us.

Sorry for the long post... but it's a topic that I feel need to be discussed and promoted.  We have no idea when our time is up in this world, and making it easy for the family we leave behind to process and deal with our affairs needs to be done.

[JulianO]

Lots of good advice above.
Moonglum mentions "Lasting Power of Attorney."
In New Zealand it is "Enduring Power of Attorney," but I imagine the two are probably similar.
This states your wishes in the event you become unable to communicate them. This could happen in circumstances such as developing Dementia, having a major stroke or having a major head injury, among others, so once again not something to ignore even if you are younger.
In NZ these are split into "Health and Welfare," and "Property."
These documents allow you to give someone whom you trust the ability to manage your financial affairs and to arrange for appropriate care for you should you lose the ability to do these things for yourself.
Something which I would highly recommend, both from working in the Aged Care sector myself for many years, and also from having a son who has physical and intellectual disabilities.