If you don’t draw up a will, then who determines who acquires what? Often it wont turn out the way you would have intended. To ensure your desires are adhered to, you should to make a last will and testament.
If you perish without making a will it’s the law that decides how your estate is divided. The intestacy rules will be used and it may not be how you’d have hoped or wished.
If you are currently married or have a civil partner but are without offspring and your property is worth a certain figure or less then your legal partner will receive the entirety of the assets including any life cover . If the estate is worth at more than this figure and you have surviving relatives, your partner would still receive this figure, in addition to 50% of the excess. There is an priority in which family will inherit, with surviving parents being at the start of the list, followed by brothers and sisters and so on.
Should you have a spouse and offspring then your spouse would receive the specific amount as above and 50% of the surplus. The offspring would receive 50% of the amount over the excess right away and the other half on the death of your spouse.
If you have children but no lawful spouse, then your offspring would share the estate. This could not be at all what you would have expected. You might have a companion who relies on you and who you might have wanted to obtain at least a proportion of your belongings, who’d get nothing.
To eschew all potential anxiety about your assets, however simple it may appear, it would be prudent to construct a last will and testament. There are several options for this. You may make it yourself or hire a skilled will service or a solicitor.
Many people build their own will, generally using a template which can acquire from stationers. Caution is advised should you proceed along this path – it’s deceptively simple to make an error and you could potentially find it invalid. The expense of having a will written, especially a somewhat simple one, is not restrictive and you can be sure that your wishes will be realised.
A skilled will writer or a solicitor will be used to handling all types of queries and will be able to assist you. There could be questions to do with setting up trust funds and maybe inheritance tax.
Now you’ve written your will, it’s a wise idea to inspect it periodically, as your situation changes. If you decide to change it, then it is prudent to nullify your existing one and have it redone. If the changes are minor, it might be simpler to draw up a codicil to make a part of the last will and testament and to be read in association with it. Any codicil will have to be constructed in the same fashion as the will in relevance signatures and witnesses.
Please be aware that any medical insurance will terminate on the death of the will holder and no value will be attributed to It in the will.