Wills

What is a Will?

Its a declaration of your intent as to how you would like to dispose of your assets on your death.  

Why make a Will?

If you do not make a Will and die Intestate, the laws of intestacy, not you, dictate who receives your assets and how much they receive.  This may of course not be the same as what you would like.

Making a Will in contrast can:

• Allow you to state who should receive what on your death.
• Help ensure your estate is distributed quickly and minimise legal costs in doing so.
• Help mitigate against Inheritance Tax.
• Help reduce the value of assets which would be assessed by your Local Authority if you need Long Term Care.  
• Allow you to dictate your funeral wishes.
• Help you provide for children or disabled people.
• Leave bequests to charities.

Why make one now?

If you haven't made one already it may be because you are married or in a civil partnership and feel everything would go to your spouse / civil partner anyway. This is unfortunately not necessarily true. Even if you are married or now in a civil partnership, if you have children and die without a Will, your spouse/civil partner would only inherit any jointly owned assets, personal chattels such as the car and jewelery and the statutory £250,000 plus a life interest in half of any remaining estate. The other half would go to the children. They would then receive the other half when your spouse or civil partner died.

You can never be sure when you may die (or lose mental capacity when you wouldn't be able to make one) so it pays to make one as soon as possible.

Is there a need to change an existing Will when you take out equity release?

Not necessarily. A lot will depend on whether your will just specifies individual legacies in monetary amounts or if it simply leaves any residual estate (after paying off debts), to be divided up in whatever percentages you would like.  If the former, yes we would suggest you ought to change it as there may not be sufficient equity left after paying back the equity release to meet these legacies.  If however, your Will simply distributes your remaining estate in whatever percentages you want, there should be no particular need to alter it unless you are taking out equity release to perhaps help just one child/beneficiary now and because of the increasing debt (under a roll up lifetime mortgage) or share of property given up (under a home reversion plan) you would want to try and rebalance what the other would receive to compensate them.

However if you are taking out equity release with a new partner/spouse who has not hitherto been included in your Will or you are using equity release to pay off an ex on divorce you should consider making a new one.

How can you make one easily and inexpensively?

Whilst you may traditionally think you have to go to solicitors to make a Will, this is no longer the case and can be expensive.  Through our connection with a professional firm of Will writers,  we are able to offer all our clients the chance to make a Will at very modest cost.  If you would like to make one please complete our online enquiry form and type Wills in the comments book.

The Equity Release Centre is trained to take instructions for Wills which are then drafted by specialist Will Writers before being checked by you and witnessed.