Member Article

Will Myths

Here Sarah Hartley, Solicitor & Director at Malcolm C Foy & Co, talks about the common misconceptions in relation to Wills, and reflects on how the rationale behind peoples thinking often doesn’t follow through

“As a Will writing solicitor, I am often puzzled by way so many people don’t make a Will. Research suggests that one in three people die without a Will, and yet the process is so simple. I have clients who make good Wills which last them throughout their lifetimes, and yet people still put the issue off. I can understand people ’not having gotten around to it’ – we all lead busy life’s and making a Will is not the most exciting way to spend our time, but many people actively choose NOT to make a Will, or at least not a professionally drawn one. I am going to talk about some of the most common reasons people choose not to make a Will, and hopefully by the end of reading this article I can persuade you that making a Will really is one of the most important and thoughtful things you can do to look after your family.

Myth 1: I just want to leave everything to my spouse so I don’t need a Will

Maybe you do… but maybe you shouldn’t! What if your spouse goes into a care home and your house has to be sold to pay for care, leaving your children with nothing? What if your spouse remar­ries? What if this is already your second marriage – have you considered that your spouse might change their Will after you die and cut your own children out entirely? Talking to a professional means that you can discuss these concerns, are there are lots of things that you can do to safeguard your own assets whilst still making sure that your spouse is comfortable.

Myth 2: My family are really close, they wouldn’t argue over money.

Oh, if I had a Pound for every time I heard this I would be a very wealthy woman! We all hope that a bereavement will bring our family closer together and not pull them apart but sadly grief and money make terrible bedfellows and can bring out the worst in people. Being clear about exactly what you want in your Will not only cuts down on administration expenses but can potentially save your family a lot of heartbreak.

Myth 3: My family know what I want

If you don’t have a Will your family have to follow the rigid rules of intestacy, meaning that even if they know what you want to happen they can’t necessarily action your requests. An example of this would be a married couple believing everything would go to their only surviving son. What they might not know is that under the intestacy rules if they had had another child who passed away before them then that child’s children (i.e. the grandchildren) would get 50% of the estate. This might be exactly what they would want to happen, but they are unlikely to have known that this would be the automatic impact.

Myth 4: I have a homemade Will, this is good enough.

So often, homemade Wills cause more problems than they solve. The number of times I have had to tell a family that the Will of their loved one is invalid is too often to count, and unfortunately by the time this is discovered it is usually too late to rectify as the person concerned has passed away. For example, I am currently dealing with an estate where a couple died in a fatal road accident together, and had made homemade Wills which left everything to the wife’s siblings. Unfortunately, the Wills had not been properly witnessed, and so were invalid. This meant that the husband’s estate passed to his siblings, which was clearly not what the couple wanted. It is really not a nice position to be in to have to tell someone that £200,000 which the couple wanted to go to them was in fact going to someone the couple had no contact with. For the sake of around £200 the couple could have both made Wills professionally and made sure who they wanted to inherit actually did inherit.

Myth 5: I don’t really care what happens when I’m gone, someone will sort things out

Some people don’t have anyone close to them, and are just happy to let things run their course when they have died, but how many of us want to see what we have worked for frittered away in expenses and costs? I am currently dealing with an estate for a lady who had no close family and no Will. She had no spouse or children, but 7 siblings, 5 of whom had died and left children of their own. Without going into the technicalities of the intestacy rules, the result was that there were over 40 beneficiaries of the estate. A genealogist was employed to undertake a family tree and trace all the beneficiaries, which cost £10,000, and my legal costs were substantially higher than usual, given that I had to collect identification, payment authorities and consents from all the different beneficiaries, and had to field calls from 40+ people asking about progress. An estate would around £120,000 has been eaten into by all of these costs, and the result is that no one individual is going to get more than £10,000 each, with some getting as little as £1,500. Had the lady made a Will, she could have left a really meaningful gift to a charity or friend, rather than a lot of money being wasted in costs and no one person receiving a life changing amount.

Myth 6: I hear about Wills getting challenged all the time, so there is no point in making one

There are only certain grounds upon which a Will can be challenged, and having a Will drawn up by a professional means that all possible safeguards can be put in place to make the Will more resistant to challenge. High profile cases about Will disputes hit the tabloids, but in reality very few Wills are actually challenged successfully, in which case the terms of the Will will simply be carried out.

Hopefully the above illustrates why making a Will is so important and will urge some readers to bite the bullet and get their affairs in order.“

Book an appointment now and get a 10% discount off the cost of a Will – quote ’SHW16’ to redeem, expires 30 June 2016. Contact Sarah by email on shartley@malcolmcfoy.co.uk or by phone on 01302 340005

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Sarah Hartley .