Where there's a Will...
 

People don’t generally like talking about Wills, or make one, maybe because this means they have to face their own mortality – but instead they should think how much pressure they will take off their family at a very difficult time. It’s the last thing they can do for them. Do it – and then forget about it.

I have been researching a bit (well I asked Mr Google) and found that in the UK only 4 out of 10 adults have Wills – which means some 31 million adults (give or take a couple) do not have a Will. In Australia more than half the adult population don’t have one either.

Would be interesting to know how many of you have done the necessary that will make at least some thngs a bit easier for those you leave behind - and if not why not. If you have a Will do you update it now and then? When a friend of mine became a single mum of 5 small boys she made a Will in which she left her children in the care of a sister. The youngest of these is now 53! Yes, definitely time to update.

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Did ours as soon as we had kids to make sure everything would be all right for them. Have updated them a few times since with changes in the family.

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I always thought that if there was a Will, then seeking probate would be unnecessary.
But from what went on after I lost Ma tells me otherwise.
Ma left a Will…..but it had not been properly signed or witnessed….so it was only useful as lavvy paper….other than it gave me something of a laugh…..’you can tell that bar-steward J**** he is getting bu88er all’.

Dorothy, sorting out Ma’s affairs was tough…..and wouldn’t you think it would have taught me something?
But No…..I am one of those many folk who have yet to get my affairs in order.
Although, I suppose it would be straight forward as there is only one child to benefit.
Yes, it is to do with confronting our mortality…….you never think about it when you are young and when you get older, you think about it a lot.

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Only last week Mrs taddy and I received our Power of Attorney documents, one each for property and financial affairs and one each for health and welfare; they would have been a minefield to fill in if our eldest daughter (who works for the government pension service), had not helped us out. I do realise that I am a numpty where computers and the like are concerned but even my daughter who works with such rules and regulations had to contact the Office of the Public Guardian (WHAT), by phone in order to make any sense of the gobbledegook and it took three months to sort. (Rant Over) wheres my Hobgoblin.

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i aint done one not likely too.

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Quiz Question:
What is the thing that all people have a lifetime to do, but never do it?


Yes, your correct it’s making a will.

Must get pen to paper today!!

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let em all fight over what i,ll be leaving. fresh air.

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[QUOTE=monkey hanger;1258392]let em all fight over what i,ll be leaving. fresh air.
Aye well, plenty oh that in Yorkshire.

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Maybe not, them tight fisted bu88ers over the border are running round with plazzy bags to catch it all in & cart it off home! :D


And no, I've not done a will recently, I suppose I should do though as things change often in our lives without any prior warning & then it's to late.

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Taddy that is a smart move and worth the effort. When my husband died I wanted to make sure that if ever I am incapacitated and can’t manage my finances I know these will be handled by two trustworthy people who have my best interests at heart and not some court-appointed person who I do not know, and who has no idea who I am, so I made sure I have an Enduring Power of Attorney in place.

However, when I expire this will expire with me – and then my Will takes over.

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My sister’s husband passed away very suddenly (and I do mean suddenly - he was making a sandwich, collapsed and died, just like that, no pre-warning) and he had not got round to making a Will. He was quite fit, not that old, actually younger than my sister – and probably thought he had plenty of time to do this. He played the stock market a bit and left a portfolio of shares and investments, and, even though she was his wife, it took Alice months to get the legalities sorted and everything signed over to her. Okay, it kept her mind occupied at a very emotional time, and gave her something to do, but it was an occupation that she could have done without. She made certain that she had a Will in place to save her son the trauma that she had been through.

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think a lot of this is really horses for courses. if you have something to actually leave then i agree with making a will. the other group is the ones living together who are not divorced with their previous wives and husbands still alive with kids from the previous marriages you may or may not have contact with along with those from your present relationship. this can get really nasty with some having more legal rights than others. its surprising how many come out of the woodwork if there is money around.

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[QUOTE=DaveinGermany;1258395]Maybe not, them tight fisted bu88ers over the border are running round with plazzy bags to catch it all in & cart it off home! :D


then sell it on for a profit. lovely jubbly.

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bit of useless information regarding the name of this thread. edward woodward actually made his film debut in the film of this name made in 1955.

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Sorry M.H. but you will have to explain that "useless bit of information".yours the Luddite.

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You fella, have been far to long in Yorkingshire! :D

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Monkey H, information is seldom useless – often it is interesting, and that’s how we learn about things. I did not know that about Edward Woodward, now I do. Will I ever use that information, probably not – but I found it interesting.

It’s a pity that lately there seems to have been a shortage of interesting facts to discuss and subjects to debate on Accy Web.

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thanks. at least you know who edward woodward was. trouble for me is that i have no clue who snoop dogg and the rest are but i,m sure they,ll have a smart phone and their ideas of what a selfie is may be far different from mine.

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This kind of situation where there are very complex family issues is one where a valid Will is essential to save lots of worry keep your assets out of the hands of the legal eagles.
My Ma’s estate was very modest, but I had ten months of stress and upset because one of my brothers who does not live in this country, put all kinds of barriers in my way.
He thought he knew better than me how to handle the winding up of the estate…..me being a weak and feeble woman (and if you believe that then I am shocked) who could be bamboozled by the process.
One of these no count sons still has not been in touch to find out where and when the funeral will be….but he was hot on contacting the solicitor to find out when he would get his divi up.
So am I bitter…..you’d better believe it.

If you have nothing to leave…or if you have only one child…..then it becomes less problematic…..but it is still a good idea to have an up to date valid will.

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i havent done one .... i know when my mum died she'd made one (i made the appointment for the solicitor to come to the house) she kicked me out of the house while she talked to him .. that took 18months 2 years to sort ... a cousin who died without leaving a will and no kids or wife ... that took 5 years to sort ...

yes i know i should do it ... and probably will do .. when i decide what to do ...

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even without making a will i do not know why the process is as complicated as it is. could it be solicitors themselves using the laws for a bigger payout. no will then your nearest living relative gets it all. with a will then if the person had his full faculties when making it should be totally 100 per cent accepted and thats it.

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From my experience and it is the only time I have had to deal with an estate.
I had to appear in front of a Commissioner of oaths and swear that I was who I said I was.
This cost a silly amount, then I had to apply for Probate as an administrator….again a cost involved.
But the biggest cost was the solicitor having to deal with a brother who in in Oz bringing up all kinds of irrelevancies that had no bearing on the estate.
This man cost the beneficiaries£2,500 in his fatuous claims.
He tried to get me removed as administrator….though I have not a clue who would have done it if he had succeeded.
Suffice it to say, this man is dead to me now.

So yes it is a lucrative business for the legal profession

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To save making a solicitor wealthier you can always write your own Will, but if you do you must make sure you follow precisely the legal guidelines so that you don’t create problems for those you leave behind. Everything has to be correctly done otherwise it will be deemed worthless, as Margaret has told us about her mother's Will. There are DIY Will kits – that come with plenty of instructions. If there isn’t a lot being left in the Will then I would say doing your own thing would be fine – but if there is anything complicated or property then maybe not.

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They still make money from you once your ,over one has passed.
Yes, you can apply for probate yourself….but I am not sure how easy it is…..and you still have to pay for this….if you get it wrong and have to reapply you have to pay again.
The commissioners of Oaths….well that was done in the presence of a solicitor…..neither of these people do it for nowt……so you still end up stumping up.
They make money out of the dealing with any property in the estate too.
The solicitors are required to ensure that you are not practicing any avoidance of Inheritance tax too.
You are only allowed to dispose of limited funds as gifts in the last seven years preceding the death…..so there are quite a lot of traps.
I know that I learned an awful lot about dealing with an estate during the time after Ma died.
The biggest lesson was blood is NOT thicker than water…..and where there is money to be had, some of those you called family, can turn nasty and show their true colours.

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I applied for probate for both my parents in law. Wasn't too difficult, just a case of adding how much money they'd got in various places and getting a valuation for the house. Certainly not enough work to justify paying a solicitor for wills that were straightforward. Did get a bit interesting when the probate office said the solicitor who made my mother in law's will had worded a clause wrongly. The solicitor refused to agree but were told they had to find the 2 people who had witnessed the will (both employees of theirs at the time) and get them to swear that the intentions expressed were correct. One had died and the other had moved away but they managed to find her and get her to do what was needed. Not sure what would have happened if they'd both died.

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Oh, that must have been a bit of a hairy time for you.
Had I not had such a trying time with the obstinate family member I might have had a go at doing it myself, but I needed the solicitor to deal with the nasty intimidating communications at a time which was harrowing enough.
When we are under pressure we can make mistakes and the last think that I needed was to have this person tell me that I had made a hash of things…..he would not accept the valuations from three estate agents, so cost were incurred in getting an accredited valuation(all unnecessary because the valuations were all within £250 of each other).

It is a time that makes me shudder and I was glad when it was over and I could consign this family member to the ‘dead to me’ file.

As I said in a previous post….it was a time when I learned a lot…..and one of the things I learned was that I am stronger than I knew I could be.

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[QUOTE=Margaret Pilkington;
The biggest lesson was blood is NOT thicker than water…..and where there is money to be had, some of those you called family, can turn nasty and show their true colours.[/QUOTE]

you will never say a truer word. i was only 7 at the time but i remember the day of my grandads funeral. two mid 40 year olds fighting on the front garden of a busy main road over his war medals. possibly the biggest impression adults ever made with me in my childhood.

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Like you MH….I found out the hard painful way.
It was a lesson well learned, paid for with tears and money…..but it is a mistake I will never repeat again as long as I live.

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It is definitely possible to write your own Will and save a fair bit of money but of course you have to be careful that everything is written exactly as it should be. Some years ago I wrote our Wills myself – mine and my husband’s. I studied everything I could find about such things and used the proper wording. I made sure these were witnessed correctly. Although I didn’t use a DIY form I did read these for any helpful hints. In saying this I probably would not have done them myself had they been complicated in any way, but they were straight-forward. When my husband passed away I had to show his Will at a couple of places and this passed muster, so I assumed I had done it correctly.

In my Will I had made some requests regarding certain pieces of jewellery which I wanted to go to specific members of my family in a very fair way. However, after those lowlifes had helped themselves to my ‘special’ stuff in October 2019 (I did a blog about the robbery at the time) my Will didn’t make sense, so I re-did it. Although it is straight-forward it will have to go to Probate but my oldest son and daughter are the Executors, they are intelligent people, I’m sure they will handle it well. I won’t know….and I certainly won’t care.

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again, why should the disposal of your own property after death be fraught with so many complications. same with house purchases when you are alive. its as if you spend life and death in support of the legal proffesion.

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That's why I wrote our Wills myself, MH. I didn't feel like paying good money to have straight-forward Wills made. Not sure if I would have tackled writing them though if they had been complicated.

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Tell everyone how easy it was to do it just to make the legal proffesion a little poorer.

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It is fine if you have a straight forward Will, but in these days of fractured families it can be complicated and if you do not pay someone to do it for you while you are alive, then it can be a costly event to sort it out after death.
If you have little to leave then it is not a worry...if you have only one wife and one child then again it is not much different...but if you have more than one wife and children from each marriage then it gets complicated.
Ma's will was very straightforward...it just wasn't legal...not witnessed so worthless.
My legal complications were from a brother who challenged my authority to deal with the estate(even though geographically he was not in a position to do it himself)
I did not wish to give the solicitors money..but it was an unfortunate necessity.

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Margaret, I know the awful time you had dealing with everything after your mother passed away. That was very stressful, made so difficult when it should not have been. People can certainly show their greedy side when money and possessions are involved.

A brother and sister I know argued over the ownership of a dinner set of all things while their mother’s body was still warm – she had died on the operating table. That was the end of the siblings relationship.

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MH, I never said it was easy. Far from it. I spent a lot of time (and I do mean a lot) sorting out the correct wording, the way a Will has to be done. It was only because I am a stubborn old duck that I kept at it until I was reasonably sure I had it right.

I would not even attempt to tell anyone how to do this. I’m not that clever or so smart that I think I could offer advice or help even, only to say that it is possible to write your own Will - but you do have to make sure you have done this correctly. DIY information will give some guidance. I would not have done ours myself had they been complicated in any way.

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Dorothy, if that had been me I would have smashed every single piece of the dinner set…..
It is so sad when families are fractured at a time when their strength is in the unity of family…but avarice and materialism gets in the way.
The best of it is, rarely can those divisions be repaired.
I know that from my point of view there are brothers that I will never speak to again.

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in my view things like that can NEVER be repaired.

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you are right cashy in the experiance i had also. if it had been a fight over their dads millions and his detached property i could understand. even wills are not safe if someone decides to go through the decesed papers and destroy a recently prepared one that did not suit them. possibly a good reason to let solicetors have their pound of flesh to stop this happening.

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There is no compulsory register of wills…although some solicitors do file a will with a central storage facility.

I do think this is a good idea….but as the administrator of Ma’s estate I could not have destroyed any valid will because the contents did not suit me…but that is just me.
My conscience would have nipped me for the rest of my life….but I am sure there are some ruthless relatives that might do that.

I know after Ma died and we could only find an invalid will(unwitnessed)….the solicitor suggested that it might be a good idea to check if this had been done….but of course this incurred a cost of almost £200…..so we did not do it(this was a joint decision between us).
All the trouble that was created was by one member who incited two other brothers to join in his nasty activities…..and this was a very modest estate.
All of them, could not wait to get their hands on the portion of their inheritance…..and one of them (who still has not been in contact with me to check when the funeral is) phoned the solicitor to find out when he would get his money……..Barsteward that he is.
If he were on fire I would bring Marshmallows to toast.

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When it was all over I sent him a copy of the invalid will…in which Ma told him he was getting
Bu88er Hall(or nowt).
Not that I feel it would have caused him any grief whatsoever.

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MH, your experience was certainly not a happy one, did not show adults in a good light to a 7 year old lad. Unfortunately greed rears its ugly head too often, and causes a lot of unpleasantness.

Re the dinner set I mentioned, the mother had lived with her son for a number of years and he had taken good care of her, whereas his sister lived away and had not been involved at all. When he refused to hand over the dinner set his sister stole a couple of pieces so that it would be incomplete. How pathetic. Their mum had just died.

That was the end of a family and all over a bit of china.

The longer I live the more I am gobsmacked at people’s behavior.

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the frightening thing with all this is that greed over nothing seems to be par for the course on this subject. people on here cannot be just the unlucky ones and this must be an everyday occurance.

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It may well be MH, but I think it also comes down to the family & how they were raised & grew up, the moral grounding they were given by those around them will play a huge part on how folk react when the situation inevitably happens.


I quite honestly believe that there will be no fueding or discord amongst us when my Dad eventually has to leave this mortal coil & may that be a long, long way off.

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You might be right about the upbringing bit….but that doesn’t fit with my situation as we were brought up using the same moral code…..so maybe my nasty siblings learned their greedy grasping confrontational behaviour.

Son, I do hope that when the time comes that you have to do this last sad task for your Dad, that you all pull together and in the same direction…and that once it is all done you still are the same lads you were before you had this job to do.

And yes…I hope it is a long time off.
Treasure him…..you do not know how hard it is once they are gone.

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I truly believe we will, we're Williams's, although my sister is now a Peters, she's still deep down one of us, you kick one of us we all limp, you go against one of us you face the whole family, so yeah I think we're good. :)

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I like that Son….a family that provides a united front that is as solid as the Great Wall of China.
That is exactly how family should be.

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really hope so dave. it was my mothers lot who kicked off and always thought they were very close. would have expected it from my fathers lot as they were permanently at war with each other due to the womens jealousy and the mens footballing level they attained.

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Aye MH, me too, but as I said above we really are good, all 3 of us have done well enough for ourselves & when I get home to UK we all meet up & go out together as a family.


And when me Dads had a few, he tells us how proud he is that we've all turned out so well. Like all families there are ups & downs, but we've always got past those & in the long run been better for it.