Will Writing

It’s a legal document which outlines what you want to happen to your belongings, your property, money and possessions when you pass away. It ensures that what you want to happen happens, basically.

We would always say anybody from the age of 18 – because nobody knows what’s going to happen. You could walk out and get hit by a bus. Everybody and anybody needs a will.

Mainly it comes down to your personal circumstances, but there’s lots of different reasons.

Once you buy a property, that’s a major asset. What would you want to happen to that if you’re with a partner? It’s really important, especially if you’re not married.

Then, if you then have children, you can confirm guardianship within a will, where you name people to look after your children if anything happened to you. We often find it’s not necessarily the people everybody would expect. You might think it’s going to be your parents, but perhaps they are too old to look after the children. You might prefer a sibling or friends who have similar beliefs to you.

Another reason for a will is if you’ve got pets – who do you want to look after them? You can put provisions within a will for that.

You also need to think about who you trust to do the work as your executor. You choose people you trust to make sure that your wishes actually happen once you pass away.

If you pass away with no will in place, then you would die ‘intestate’. The government has a set of rules, called the laws of intestacy. In my opinion these are quite outdated, but it’s almost like a flow chart giving guidance of who the government considers to be your closest living relatives. It sets out a hierarchy of who should receive a share of your estate if you pass away intestate.

The first question is whether there is a legal spouse – a husband or wife or civil partner. If so, they may receive all or a proportion of your estate. It depends whether or not you have children at the time of your death. It can get a bit complicated there.

If there is no legal spouse then it goes to children, parents, siblings and extended family from there, all the way through to the Crown.

By having a will you retain control of who’s going to get what, as opposed to leaving it in the hands of the government with an outdated system. It doesn’t reflect the average family unit – if there is one, these days.

Solicitors are regulated by their governing body, the Solicitors Regulation Authority. That gives you some comfort that there is a body overseeing the professional firm or individual and they have a set of rules to adhere to.

Wills aren’t regulated, in that anyone can go out and become a will writer. But we as a company voluntarily sign up to the Society of Will Writers. That puts in place a set of rules and expectations for a degree of governance. Clients can expect a certain level of service from anyone who signs up to that body. By signing up to that, we are voluntarily being governed and adhering to those rules.

Hopefully the answers we’ve given so far highlight how important this document is. And on that basis, we would obviously suggest that you store it somewhere safe, not just in the bottom of the kitchen cupboard, where it could get damaged.

Storing your original legal will at home exposes it to potential tampering or destruction. For instance, if a house fire occurs while both you and your will are inside, the government will determine the distribution of your estate, and your wishes might not be honoured.

We would suggest that you store it with us. There are a number of advantages with doing that, starting with the fact that we register it with the National Wills Database. This states you have a will in place – and anybody can search that when you pass away.

We will also give you copies of the will to store at home and tell your executors where it is. Also if you need any updates to your will, by paying a storage fee to us, we’ll do any updates free of charge for you. You can update it every couple of years and make it a living document.

Things change – people get married, divorced, have children, and it makes that whole process a lot easier if we sit down with you every couple of years and review that will to make sure it’s still relevant.

There’s a lot of variables involved in estate planning. First and foremost, we don’t know when we’re going to die – it could be today or it could be many years down the line. Within that time, we also don’t know how much we’re going to be worth, what assets we will have, or what family members we will have in the future.

There could be more children in the family. Sadly, people pass away as well. Doing nothing with that will for many years, could mean that by the time you pass away, it’s quite outdated.

As part of the storage arrangement with us, your will comes with free amendments. Then, at any given point in time, that document is up to date and accurately reflects the client’s wishes as much as possible.

It’s not as easy as just giving a price because everyone’s situation is different. The costs of not having a will usually far outweigh the cost of setting one up.

We sit down with clients for a free first consultation. Part of that is for us to get to know the client’s family set up and circumstances as well as their financial set up and how they appear through the tax man’s eyes. We can then work out how much inheritance tax they may have to pay, if they were to pass away.

We’ve got that in the forefront of our mind when we ask the client what they want to achieve. We then talk to the client about if they were to pass away, who would they want to get what, and how?

By collecting all of that information, we can then give an accurate idea of costs. We can tell the client how to achieve their goals in the most legally secure and tax efficient manner. We would give them the cost of our advice and options for them to decide whether they want to go ahead or not.

We don’t charge for our first consultation. It’s always free. But it’s very difficult to give you an accurate costing because everyone’s different.

There are a lot of dangers. A will is the most mis-drafted legal document in the UK. You can write your own will, and decades ago, people would sit in the pub and write a will on the back of a beer mat. As long as it was witnessed and signed and dated, it could – and did – take legal effect. A simple estate could be dealt with like that, but there are dangers, and lots of them.

I don’t know how to build a brick wall, so I don’t think I would start trying to build an extension on my house. I just don’t have the knowledge or the skills to do that. It’s the same with wills.

You’ve worked your entire life to accumulate wealth, assets and your estate for your loved ones. Why then dabble in distributing that estate yourself when lots of legal pitfalls could happen?

Unfortunately, I have had ringside seats to this. A family friend sadly passed away after many years of battling cancer. He decided to do his own will and made a gift to his siblings of £100,000 each. He’d made that on first rather than second death, which then impacted his wife. She was £200,000 out of pocket because of a simple mistake.

That’s the magnitude of the impact to your family if you try to do it yourself, as opposed to having a professional do it who’s done it, hundreds of thousands of times.

I have also read recently that the number of self-written wills being contested in court is going up quite rapidly. By writing your own will you think you’re protecting your family, but if your will is then contested, it could take years before your house can be sold so that your loved ones can access that money.

The simple answer is contact us, and we will fit in around you. We could meet you in the evenings, weekends, or you are more than welcome to come into one of our two offices.

We can meet on Zoom if that’s better for you. Just contact us through the website or give us a call.

We work very closely with independent financial advisors. They are usually a professional that helps you manage your money and assets throughout your life.

We can dovetail with them, so we can plan for a person’s ultimate passing, and try to reduce any inheritance tax liability that they may have. The two of us can work together on an individual’s estate, giving them the benefit of using those assets in life as much as they need.

If you’ve got an impending inheritance tax liability, you might want to then start thinking about what assets you can start distributing in life. That could be monies, investments, properties, you name it. But by working closely with ourselves and a financial advisor, we can give clients a full spectrum of advice. We make sure you have full use of your assets for as long as you want them, and ultimately leave your estate in the most tax efficient manner to your loved ones.

Will writing is not part of the Openwork offering and is offered in our own right. Openwork Limited accepts no responsibility for this aspect of our business. Will writing is not regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.