Wills
A will names who inherits what you own, who deals with your estate, and who looks after any children of yours who are under 18. These are three separate decisions, and a will only works if each one is written down clearly and signed correctly.
What a will does
Making a will means making three separate decisions, and it is easy to think of them as one.
- Who inherits. What each person or organisation you name receives from your estate.
- Who deals with your estate. Your executor collects in what you own, pays any debts and tax, and distributes what is left to the people you have named.
- Who looks after your children. If you have children under 18 and there is no other parent able to care for them, your will names a guardian.
These can be the same person, or different people. A will lets you choose deliberately, rather than leaving the choice to whoever ends up in that position by default.
What happens if you don't have one
If you die without a valid will, the law decides who inherits under fixed rules called intestacy.
Those rules do not ask what you would have wanted, and they produce results that surprise a lot of families.
- If you have a spouse or civil partner and children, your spouse or civil partner takes your personal possessions, the first £322,000 of your estate, and half of what is left. The other half is divided between your children.
- If you have a spouse or civil partner and no children, they inherit everything.
- An unmarried partner inherits nothing under intestacy, however long you lived together.
- Stepchildren you never adopted do not inherit under intestacy, even if you raised them.
What we do
We take your instructions, draft the will, and go through the draft with you so you understand exactly what it does before you sign it. Once you are happy with it, we supervise the signing and witnessing.
Two separate rules decide whether a will works, and they have very different consequences.
If the signing is wrong
The whole will fails, however clearly it sets out what you wanted.
If a witness is left a gift
Only that gift is void. The rest of the will still takes effect.
On the first rule: you — or someone else, in your presence and at your direction — must sign the will, and that signature must be made or acknowledged in the presence of two or more witnesses who are present together at the same time; each witness must then also sign it, in your presence. Get any of this wrong and the will is not validly executed, so it fails as a whole, however clearly it says what you wanted. This is a common way home-made wills fail, which is why we supervise it.
On the second rule, which governs who you choose as a witness: if a witness, or that witness’s spouse or civil partner at the time, is left a gift under the will, only that gift is void — the will itself remains valid and everything else in it still takes effect.
We draft your will on the instructions you give us. It does not include inheritance tax planning unless you ask us to advise on that separately.
Not sure what your will needs to cover?
Tell us your situation and we will set out what the will should do, and what it will cost, before any work begins.
Mirror wills
Mirror wills are a pair of wills made by two people — usually a couple — in matching terms, typically leaving everything to each other and then, after both have died, to the same beneficiaries.
If keeping the arrangement fixed after the first death matters to you, that needs a different kind of document — tell us, and we can discuss it.
Reviewing an existing will
A will is not a one-off task. Some events change what it means, or cancel it outright, without you doing anything.
Marriage
Automatically revokes an earlier will — unless the will was made in expectation of that particular marriage and says so.
Divorce
Does not revoke the will, but changes how it is read: your former spouse or civil partner is treated as if they had died before you, so any gift or appointment to them usually falls away.
New children, buying a home, or a change in who you would want as executor or guardian are also good reasons to look at your will again.
Questions people ask
No. There is no legal requirement to use a solicitor, and a will you write yourself can be perfectly valid. A solicitor mainly reduces the risk of a mistake in the drafting or the signing that only comes to light after you have died, when it is too late to fix.
Yes. What matters is that it says clearly what you want, and that it is signed and witnessed correctly. Many problems with home-made wills come from unclear wording or a mistake with witnessing, rather than from the idea of writing it yourself.
Somewhere safe that your executor can find after you die, and tell them, or a close family member, where it is. A will that cannot be found is treated as if it does not exist.
After any significant change — marriage, divorce, a new child, moving house, or a change in who you would want as executor or guardian — and every few years even if nothing obvious has changed.
Generally yes, you can choose who inherits, but certain people — a spouse or civil partner, a former spouse or civil partner who has not remarried, a child, someone treated as a child of the family, a partner you lived with for at least two years, or someone you were financially maintaining — may be able to bring a claim against your estate if they are left without reasonable provision. A spouse or a child does not have to show financial dependency to do that.
Ready to start?
Send an enquiry and we will tell you what it costs before any work begins.