Safeguarding The Children In Your Will
If you don’t write a last will and testament, then who decides who gets what? It will not proceed how you would have chosen. To make sure your desires are fulfilled, you need to construct a last will and testament.
If you die without without making a free will it’s the law that decides how your property is distributed. The intestacy rules are applied and it will not be what you will have hoped or wished.
If your currently married or have a civil partner but are without children and your estate is valued at a certain amount or less then your legal partner would get the whole of the assets including any life assurance cover . If the estate is valued at more than this threshold and you have existing relatives, your spouse would still get this figure, plus half of the excess. There exists an order in which relatives would inherit, with surviving parents being at the top of the list, followed by siblings and so on.
Should you have a civil partner and children then your partner would receive the specific amount as above and half of the excess. The offspring would receive half of the amount over the excess immediately and the other half on the death of your spouse.
If you have offspring but no legal spouse, then your offspring would share the inheritance. This could not be at all what you would have hoped. You could have a companion who relies on you and who you would have intended to get at least share of your assets, who’d receive nothing.
To eschew all possible anxiety about your estate, regardless of how simple it may seem, you should draw up a will. There are various ways to do this. You could build it yourself or use a trained will service or a solicitor.
Many people build their own will, generally using a template which you can acquire from stationers. Take care if you proceed along this path – it’s very easy to make a mistake and you could potentially find it invalid. The price of having a will made, especially a relatively basic one, is not exorbitant and you can be definite that your intentions will be carried out.
A professional will agent or a solicitor will be experienced with processing all forms of enquiries and will be able to help you. There could be queries regarding setting up trusts and perhaps inheritance tax.
Now you’ve made your will, it’s a good idea to review it on occasion, as circumstances change. If you decide to change it, then it’s a smart move to nullify your earlier one and have it re-written. If the changes are minor, it may be easier to draw up a codicil to form a section of the will and to be read in conjunction with it. Any codicil will have to be constructed in the same way as the will in regards to signatures and witnesses.
Please be aware that any health cover will terminate on the death of the will holder and no value will be attributed to It in the will.
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