If you were me would you have a will ?

 


I keep hearing that I should write a will.  I'm 65 years old , living in a
small terraced house in North London (u.k.) together with wife 61 years old
and son 29 years old.

The house is worth about just under 300K which is below the inheritence
threshold and is owned jointly (tenants in common) with my wife. My total
savings are small.

When I die I would wish to leave it all the wife, and any amount to my son
that enables him not to pay any inheritance tax.

I guess thats a fairly common kind of family situation, without any
additional complications; so I thought it would be fairly easy to get advice
on how to write a will.

On google I can get up to 7 million returns on my searches, but everyone
I've looked at wants to make money out giving any advice.  With plenty of 'a
bad will is worse than no will' kind of suggestions, thrown in.

Is the advice that you *should* make a will really applicable to someone
like myself?  What would be any advantages to having a will?

The nearest I have got so far to creating one is a bit of information I
picked up, which says I can just write out roughly as follow:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

This will 'dated' .........by  'john........'  of 'address'......

I revoke all earlier wills and Codicils.

I appoint as my executor and trustees my wife 'name'........ and my son
.......

I give my Estate and Possesions to my wife ............

If she does not survive me I give my Estate and possisions to my son ......

Signed by  .............   John   'my name'

In our presence and attested by us in his presence and in the presence of
each other.

Witness 1.  signature......., full name ...... address......occupation......

Witness 2.  signature......., full name ...... address......occupation......

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Is this really all I need to do?  In fact in my situation do I really even
need to do this?       Thanks for any advice.

 



Around here, there are laws which prescribe what happens to property
when someone dies without a will; it's almost certainly the case where
you live.

Since you have some specific ideas about how you want your assets
distributed, you might investigate what your local laws say, and if they
don't match your wishes, you'll need a will of some sort.

--
Bert Hyman    St. Paul, MN    bert@iphouse.com

 

john mayfield wrote:

for the pittance that you will be charged (about 75 quid) it is best to have
you and your wife's wills made up professionally, they will think of aspects
that you would not think of in a million years.  and it will speed
everything up when you go.

 

Mrcheerful wrote:

I wrote wills for my father and for my mother-in-law. They both sped through
probate without a single problem. I have also written wills for myself and
my wife and for my children.

For people with simple affairs, wills are straightforward and easy to
prepare. £75 for drawing one up (often simply adding personal details to a
ready-prepared template) is outrageous.

Kev

 

On 4 Mar, 17:43, "Ret." <xxx> wrote:

If you don't like paying money to a solicitor, there is a "Will Aid"
scheme in which some solicitors participate where you make a donation
to a charity instead. It only operates at certain times of the year --
Google indicates that the next period will be November 2010.

I concur with not appointing a solicitor or bank as executor. My
mother appointed the bank who charged a fortune and took a year to
sell the house (using their own estate agent subsidiary) at a time
when it was a seller's market.

Chris