If you choose not to construct a will, then who determines who gets what? It may not go the way you would have chosen. To make sure your preferences are adhered to, you need to construct a will.

If you perish without without making a free will it’s the law that dictates how your property is distributed. The intestacy rules will be used and it will not be how you’d have hoped or wanted.

If your legally married or have a civil partner but are without offspring and your estate is worth a predefined threshold or under then your civil partner would get the total of the property including any life cover . If the assets is worth greater than this threshold and you have existing relatives, your spouse would still receive this figure, in addition to 50% of the remainder. There is an order in which family will inherit, with surviving parents situated at the top of the list, followed by brothers and sisters and so on.

Should you have a spouse and offspring then your spouse would receive the set amount as above and half of the remainder. The children will inherit 50% of the amount over the set amount right away and the other 50% on the passing of your spouse.

If you have children but no lawful partner, then your children would divide the estate. This may not be what you’d have expected. You might have a partner who relies on you and who you might have wanted to obtain at least a proportion of your assets, who’d receive nothing.

To remove all possible apprehension about your estate, however straightforward it may seem, it would be prudent to make a will. There are several ways to do this. You may make it on your own or use a trained will writer or a solicitor.

Often people build their own will, generally using a template which can acquire from the post office. Take care if you proceed along this route – it’s surprisingly easy to make a mistake and you could potentially make it void. The cost of having a will constructed, particularly a somewhat simple one, is not prohibitive and you can be sure that your desires will be realised.

A trained will service or a solicitor will be used to handling all types of queries and will be able to assist you. There could be questions regarding starting trust funds and maybe inheritance tax.
Having written your will, it’s a good decision to review it from time to time, as your situation changes. If you decide to change it, then it’s sensible to nullify your previous one and have it remade. If the alterations are minimal, it might be simpler to draw up a codicil to form a part of the will and to be read in partnership with it. Any codicil will have to be drawn up in the same fashion as the will in relevance 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.