It is extremely important that any named beneficiary in a Will can be easily identified.
After your death, your Executors must be able to say with certainty that an individual either is, or is not, a beneficiary under your Will. There are many things that you can do to assist your Executors when making a Will, to make your beneficiaries as identifiable as possible:
- Include the full name of each beneficiary and where possible, their relationship to you as the Testator. Simply gifting “£1,000 to John Smith” with no explanation or obvious link to you as the Testator is not sufficient and will make it extremely difficult for the Executor(s) to identify a beneficiary when dealing with the estate.
- Include any names by which the beneficiary is also known, eg; my friend John Smith, also known as “Jonno”.
- Include full addresses of each beneficiary. Even where beneficiaries have moved after the Execution of the Will and the address in the Will has not been updated to reflect this, it will provide useful as one of their last known addresses – any address is better than no address in helping to track down an individual.
- Think about including a updated list of addresses to be stored with your Will as people move house – this will assist the Executors when required to contact beneficiaries, but save you continually having to update your Will.
There are no legal requirements to include specific details of individual beneficiaries in a Will, however, these will prove useful when contacting beneficiaries during the administration process after death, and avoid unnecessary delays to the distribution of your assets.
You should always bear in mind that ultimately, where there is uncertainty of who a legacy or gift is intended for in a Will, then that gift shall fail. It will subsequently either fall to an alternative beneficiary, fall into the ‘residue’ of your estate, or in severe cases, mean that the estate is ‘partially intestate’, so will pass under the Government’s ‘Rules of Intestacy’ which could mean the failed gift ends up going to the Treasury!
Heir Tight Wills helps clients put in place robust provisions and valid documents, to protect their loved ones and their assets both during their lifetime and after their death. For a FREE Consultation to discuss writing or updating your Will & estate planning provisions, contact Rachael Rodgers on 0845 519 7585, or CONTACT US via email.
