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Me and mrsws are both mid 40's now. Daughters 18 in March and lad will be 15 in Feb. Weve mentioned this a few times and never sorted anything so basically have nothing in place. We're going abroad in a few weeks for the first time without the kids and mrsws is certain the plane is going to crash leaving the children orphaned so I thought I'd look at wills. We have a car a dog a house some savings and two kids. It's not at all complicated. Do online wills suffice?
Do they - for instance - handle who will be responsible for the upbringing of the 15yo (at least)?
Have you set up powers of attorney for both of you (lasting & welfare) ?
I have just been making sure our affairs are in order prior to a biggish holiday coming up.
Made more complex by still handling my mums affairs from her death last year..
Where kids are involved we went for the peace of mind of a Solicitor. As kcal points out, there is also a care element to consider. Also when do they get the money - at 18 or make them wait till they are 21?
Whatever age you'd need to assign trustee(s) to manage the money before they have access to it. They may need some early and this could be approved by the trustee - you know for coke and hookers!
I’d say not. I did an off the shelf one before a big trip to the Himalaya just in case! Fast forward few years and I had more stuff to leave so went to see a solicitor. He absolutely ripped holes and pointed out lots of issues with my home made one. I think I paid about £150 and get free updates till death if I need to make amendments.
Any will is better than no will, but a solicitor's one is best.
And don't think mayhem can't happen in your life.
A friend of mine has set up a business will writing and sorting LPA's. He's very reasonable I believe. If you're in the North West I can give you his details 😜😜
I'm an Executor of my Mum's will and am currently dealing with everything that entails. What I've found is as long as it's written down and witnessed, then it's a legal document. My Mum's Will is written by hand on a piece of A4 and she had her solicitor witness it. Jon done. I have now done exactly the same to sort my own Will out which covers who will look after my children etc and my solicitor signed it. Again, job done.
It’s not at all complicated. Do online wills suffice?
Wills are only complicated if your requirements are complicated.
Wills are only complicated if your requirements are complicated.
As a solicitor, I agree with this 100%. It is also true that most people's requirements are not complicated. The only wrinkle is that not everyone who has complicated requirements realises that their requirements are, in fact, complicated. 🙂
The only thing I'd add to this is that you should make sure you have a copy of the Will yourself - don't trust your Solicitor to keep it safe!
When my mum died it turned out that the Solicitors had lost her latest Will and we had to use a copy that we found in the house - it's not ideal and we had no idea whether it was a copy of the latest Will or not but it's all we had.
Solicitors will, generally, store your Will for free - trust that service as much as you've paid for it.
My company has just finished a project scanning over 120,000 Wills for a large law firm as they wanted to create a digital Will Bank to give them fast access without pulling the original from offsite storage - gives them a backup also.
Get a copy (digital or hard copy) and store it yourself.
We did wills with a solicitor.
£250
I could have done the same with a template off the Internet.
That is because our requirements were/are super simple