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Your Will is the largest cheque you will ever write – it gives away all your assets.  If you decide to ‘do it on the cheap’, or ‘Do It Yourself’ you might be landing your loved ones with serious problems, with years of delays and huge costs incurred to put things right, and you won’t be around at the time it all goes wrong.

According to the financial advice website unbiased.co.uk, of the 2/3 of adults in the UK that have no Will, 1 in 10 say the cost is putting them off.  It is true, a professionally drafted Will might cost ~£200 for a basic Single Will, and upwards of £500 to include robust estate planning provision.  But where an off-the-shelf DIY Wills costs about ~£20, with some online Wills available for under £10, this is very likely be a very false economy.

The saying “You don’t know what you don’t know” has never been more relevant than when applied to writing a Will. The average consumer simply does not have the knowledge or ability to draw up legal documents themselves, even for what appears to be the most straightforward of situations.

Some Common Errors

– Failing to sign your Will, or not having two witnesses present together at the same time invalidates a Will, and if a beneficiary is a witness they will lose their inheritance

– Not updating your Will frequently might mean part or all of it is invalid, or appointees inappropriate; as legislation and personal situations change, so should your Will

– Altering your Will; you can’t just change details in a Will, it must be done in the correct way, and must be signed and witnesses in the same way as the original Will

– Marking your Will; the marks of a staple or even a paperclip may invalidate a Will, as the court will see there was something attached to it that is now missing…

– Confusion within the context of the Will is likely to invalidate it

– A lack of the appropriate asset protection measures in a Will; the use of Trusts within the Will can protect your estate from your surviving souse’s remarriage or care home fees, avoid unnecessary inheritance tax, or help provide for  problematical beneficiaires

– Death brings out the worst in families; Wills are often contested by relations who feel they have a claim if the Will is not correctly drafted

Any errors or omissions within a Will can invalidate all or parts of it, meaning your estate may not go where you want it to. Without proper advice, your estate may be frittered away in legal costs to get it sorted it out, resulting in potentially years of delays.  This is likely to put massive stress on your family and could leave them in a desperate financial position until your assets are released.

“If you think you’ve paid a lot all you’ve lost is a bit of money,
but if you pay too little you could lose everything, because
what you’ve bought is not capable of doing what you need it to do”

The people who tend to do best out of Cheap and DIY Wills are the solicitors who make a lot of money out of putting them right!

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Don’t put it off

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