Tuesday, February 1st, 2011 at
2:54 pm
If you don’t draw up a will, then who determines who gets what? Things wont proceed how you would have liked. To make sure your desires are followed, you need to draw up a last will and testament.
If you die without without writing your last will and testament it’s the crown that decides how your estate is distributed. The intestacy laws are applied and it will not be how you’d have hoped or wished.
If you are legally married or have a civil partner but no children and your property is worth a specific figure or under then your civil partner would get the whole of the property including any life assurance . If the assets is valued greater than this amount and you have existing family, your partner will 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 siblings and so on.
Should you have a civil partner and children then your partner will receive the predefined amount as above and half of the excess. The offspring will inherit half of the sum over the threshold right away and the other 50% on the death of your partner.
If you have offspring but no lawful partner, then your children would share the estate. This could not be what you would have hoped. You could have a companion who depends on you and who you might have wanted to inherit at least part of your belongings, who’d get nothing.
To avoid all possible worry about your assets, however straightforward it may seem, you should make a will. There are many ways to do this. You may make it on your own or use a trained will service or a solicitor.
Often people make their own last will and testament, commonly using a template which you can acquire from the post office. Caution is advised should you go along this route – it’s deceptively easy to make an error and you could even make it void. The price of having a will constructed, especially a somewhat basic one, is not exorbitant and you can be definite that your desires will be fulfilled.
A trained will agent or a solicitor will be used to dealing with all forms of queries and will be able to help you. You might have questions to do with setting up trust funds and maybe taxes.
Now you’ve made your will, it’s a wise decision to reassess it periodically, as your situation changes. If you resolve to alter it, then it’s a smart move to revoke your previous one and have it re-written. If the alterations are small, it may be easier to write a codicil to form a part of the last will and testament and to be read in conjunction with it. Any codicil will have to be drawn up in the same fashion 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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