If you fail to construct a will, then who determines who receives what? Things wont turn out the way you would have preferred. To ensure your preferences are followed, you need to draw up a will.

If you die without leaving a probate will it’s the courts that decides how your assets is divided. The intestacy rules will be applied and it may not be what you’d have hoped or wished.

If you are legally married or have a civil partner but no children and your property is valued at a predefined figure or under then your legal partner will receive the entirety of the assets including any life insurance . If the property is valued above this amount and you have existing family, your spouse would still get this amount, plus 50% of the remainder. There exists an order in which relatives would inherit, with existing parents being at the start of the list, followed by siblings and so on.

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

Should you have children but no legal spouse, then your offspring would divide the estate. This could not be as you’d have expected. You might have a companion who relies on you and who you might have wished to receive at least part of your belongings, who’d get nothing.

To avoid all potential anxiety about your estate, however simple it may appear, it would be prudent to construct a last will and testament. There are many ways to do this. You could make it yourself or use a trained will agent or a solicitor.

Often people draw up their own last will and testament, generally using a form which you can buy from the post office. Take care if you go along this route – it’s very easy to make an error and you could even make it invalid. The cost of having a will written, especially a comparatively simple one, is not excessive and you can be confident that your wishes will be carried out.

A professional will agent or a solicitor will be experienced with processing all forms of enquiries and will be able to assist you. You might have queries to do with setting up trusts and perhaps taxes.
Having made your will, it’s a wise idea to review it on occasion, as circumstances change. If you conclude to change it, then it is probably better to revoke your earlier one and have it re-written. If the alterations are small, it could be more straight forward to make a codicil to form a section of the last will and testament and to be used in association with it. Any codicil will have to be constructed in the same method as the will in relevance signatures and witnesses.

Please be aware that any health insurance will terminate on the death of the will holder and no value will be attributed to It in the will.