Wills

Thread dredge. Anyone able to recommend a solicitor for drafting/updating my will? It's pretty straightforward but, post divorce, there are a couple of more complex issues around holding my estate in flexible trust if I snuff it before the kids are old enough to inherit. Ta.

Oh, and this should probably be moved to misc and meaningless

Good information here. Cheers Cliveo et al.

I need to get my will sorted.

Apart from letting people know who gets my bikes and my microcosm investment would a will cover things like whether to turn off the life support and who owns my body after death (I imagine some religious people in my family would wish for a religious burial though I'm an atheist) or is that different document (a living will)?

This morning a colleague (non legal) came to see me in tears. Her partner and she were both from Eastern Europe. He died a few months ago aged 33 in an accident. They were not married. He had no will. He was estranged from his father who is somewhere in the US. A real mess. A will would have resolved it.

This sounds like my situation. Best not die, eh?

I have assets in Australia and here and a bird and a set of olds. That's more hassle than I can reasonably deal with. I'll give you a fiver to sort it. No more, no less.

I, hippy, hereby give all of my stuff and tings (inclusive of coked up midgets) to the bin man. Please recycle where possible.

Signed ___________

Sweet. I owe you a beer for that.

this reminds me - if you re in a union they often arrange a free will service. Saves you a few pennies and saves a lot of hassle after you've gone.

I'm not sure that clauses stating that any inheritance is conditional on looking after my vinyl, comics, set of Fortean Times and stamp collection are legit though.

Tuning in, with littl'un on the scene defo need one.

Any recommendations for a Solicitor who knows about wills, setting up lasting power of attorney and setting up Trusts?

Someone 'on here' would be good

POA stuff is pretty easy, just did it with my Mum. She downloaded the forms, filled them in, I signed and posted them back

Thanks.

That's Lasting Power of Attorney?
Stuff about finance arrangement and medical requests?

Did you involve a Solicitor?

[Edit]
I assume you used this .gov website
https://www.gov.uk/power-of-attorney

Yep, health and financial stuff. I presume my Mum had a solicitor witness it, but I personally never had to see one, just signed it. Got a letter a few weeks later stating that I'd been named on a power of attorney document and had a few weeks to contest it if I wished, then another letter few weeks after that saying it was all confirmed.

10 years since I commented on this. Still haven't got a will. So you can see I'm very proactive when it comes to legal paperwork. Given the high likelihood of death in my line of work fun I'm revisiting this topic.

Do I need to lawyer up? Can I write any old shit on some bogroll and be legit? What's the best way to approach this? Oh, both me and my long-suffering but also not dead yet partner need to do this.

Am a lawyer, am not your or anyone else here’s lawyer. Having worked on contested inheritances, both with and without existing wills, please make an effort to get a proper will done if you have extensive assets or a complex estate (e.g., assets in multiple countries, leaving inheritance to someone who lacks legal capacity, previous marriages, businesses or trusts, etc. )

The UK seems pretty straightforward:

https://www.gov.uk/make-will/make-sure-your-will-is-legal

Thanks.

Not really complex, other than your point about having scattered assets in multiple countries.

Is the point of the will to document all my assets though (ballache!) or just say "take everything I have and let this person decide"?

At the risk of being overheard in the golf club inheritance tax planning needs to be considered. Lots of local solicitors offer reasonable rates for straightforward mutual wills, i.e. when one partner dies the IHT allowance passes to the other as does their residential property allowance.

inheritance tax planning needs to be considered

Worth mentioning that even for non-golfers, managing the tax side of an inheritance does at least two helpful things:

1) It can take a significant emotional burden off of the bereaved. Taxes are stressful enough as they are, and more so in bereavement.

2) It helps transfer more of the estate to the heirs instead of HMRC. There are deductions and other benefits that heirs and executors can claim, but they need to know about them in order to do so. Citizens Advice and Gov.Uk et al can help you for free if you don’t want to pay a solicitor.

As an example of 2), I helped someone claim a tax allowance that belonged to their long-deceased father, that had in turn passed to their recently deceased mother. If their mum hadn’t told them about it, they probably wouldn’t have found out they were entitled to it.

Is the point of the will to document all my assets though (ballache!) or just say "take everything I have and let this person decide"?

(Editing to add details)
It’s to decide the ownership and beneficiary rights over your assets upon your passing. Documenting your assets is a job that ultimately falls on the executor, as they’re most often the person to fill out the HMRC tax return quantifying your estate. The level of detail required can vary according to a whole mess of reasons, and the more complex the estate, the more detail will be required.

If you want to and are able to document everything in detail, that’s great and makes things easier, especially if you’re dividing the inheritance. If you ‘leave everything to Mrs. Hippy for her to do as she likes’, it’s still helpful to put that in a written will. If you don’t give specifics somewhere and just say ‘the money in my four UK bank accounts’ then the executor will have the job of tracking those down.

If there are people who might have legal right to an inheritance, like children or exes, that’s when a solicitor’s support can help prevent a lawsuit, or at least make the will much less likely to be overruled by a court.

How do I ensure HMRC get fuck all of my money? They'll have taken quite enough already.

Die penniless?

That's very hard to time correctly, unless I lose all my money then kill myself. Which sounds a bit too much like work to me.

There’s a robust industry catering to the rich promising precisely this.

I'm not rich enough to pay for that sort of shit. Also, I'll be dead, so fuck it.

But then again, I've paid my tax, fuck them double taxing me. Anyway, this is more nonsense than I was prepared for. I just want a basic... "hippy's under a car, please give all his shit to his long-suffering partner" kinda thing.

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/family/free-cheap-wills/

Dibs midgets.