When you’re in the early days of your career, as yet unmarried with no significant assets and no dependents, writing a will is very low down on your list of priorities. With greater responsibility comes great anxiety and concerns. Your thoughts may just turn to preparing that document that will ensure your nearest and dearest are looked after a you would wish them to be in the event of your death.
Actually preparing a will these days is easier than it has ever been. If you’re London based, simply googling ‘will writing service London’ will throw up a myriad of specialists who will ensure that whatever you produce is done so within the required legal guidelines. You don’t have to attend the plush offices of a solicitor who will cost the earth. Provided your situation is nt overly complicated, then everything can be done online.
In the meantime, it is important to know and understand that areas that might mess up your will writing, and render it invalid, leaving your loved ones in a bigger mess than they could have imagined. Make sure you bear these in mind when making your will.
1. Choose Your Witnesses with Care
Your will must be countersigned y two independent witnesses who are over the age of 18. You must all be physically present, in a room together at the same time. You must sign the document first, observed by your witnesses, then they must each sign the document, observed by yourself.
Your witnesses must not be beneficiaries named in the will. Should your partner or child be brought in as a witness, this would actually negate any claim they have on your estate, even if they are named within the will. So make sure that your witnesses are wholly independent to any claim within your will.
2. Be Clear, Concise, and Specific Without Being too Specific
The trouble with being too specific in your will, is that life has a habit of changing on a regular basis. For example, if you’re an avid collector of first editions, you might state ion your will that you want your collection of Agatha Christie first editions to go to your firstborn. However, if 20 years later those Agatha Christie first editions have long since been sold off and replaced with first edition Harry Potter’s then that special request is no longer valid. Instead you need to be specific without using specifics – more along the lines of bequeathing you ‘collection of first edition books’, which would include any new additions that you might have gathered over the years.
3. Throwing Blended Families into the Mix
Blended families can throw several spanners into the works depending on your individual family dynamics. Any step children are not considered in the same category as biological children. So if you remarried at an early age and brought up your new partner’s child as your own, that child is not automatically entitled to any claim on your estate. You need to explicitly mention them in your will if they are to benefit to the same degree as your biological children.
Equally, if you are not legally married, then your partner is not automatically entitled to inherit your estate, even if you’ve built your life together over many years. This means that your partner of, for example, thirty years, could be at risk of losing their home and ending up with nothing if you do not explicitly state in the will that they are named as a beneficiary.
These are just a few of the loopholes that could trip you up and cause your family untold anguish and anxiety of they are not tackled properly when you prepare your will. The important thing is to check the contents of your will every time you go through a life change – it doesn’t have to be significant. Just enough to keep tweaking its contents to reflect your current situation.
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