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Wills - What to Avoid
There are a number of pitfalls involved in
making a will. and most of them are very
easy to avoid.
Above all, never attempt to do it yourself.
Drafting a will is a very technical business
and it is exceptionally easy to get it
wrong. If you do get it wrong your intended
beneficiaries could be involved in costly
litigation (the costs of which will very
likely come out of your estate) and they
will have no-one to sue if you got it wrong.
Use a solicitor to draft your will. It
should only cost a modest amount and, at the
very least, if he/she does get it wrong your
intended beneficiaries would have some
remedy.
Secondly, do not appoint a solicitor or
other professional as an executor of your
will unless there is very good reason for
doing so. Sometimes there is a good reason
such as, for instance, where you want to
make sure that a trust for the benefit of
children is scrupulously observed.
Professionals who act as executors usually
have a charging clause in the will which
enables them to charge for things which a
lay executor could perfectly easily have
done - selling a house and liaising with
estate agents, for example.
The very worst scenario is where a bank or
other institution has been appointed
executor. If you have such a will change it
now. Banks and institutional executors
usually charge a great deal for everything
they do and having such an executor will
very soon make a substantial hole in the
estate. They are also often very cautious
and slow in their administration which can
add very considerably to the costs. For
example, a bank will very often have shares
valued by its stock broking arm or a house
sold by its estate agency and there are fees
and delay usually involved at every step. If
it really is necessary to appoint a
professional executor (and it sometimes is)
then it is almost invariably cheaper and
quicker in the long run to use, say, the
family solicitor or accountant but always
consider whether you need to do so carefully
in the first place.
Thirdly, it is a little known fact that
wills can be deposited for safe-keeping at
the Principal Probate Registry in the
Strand, London, for a one-off fee of
(currently) £1. Such wills cannot get lost
and it saves the hassle of contacting many
banks or solicitors particularly where the
deceased may have moved home on several
occasions. Searching to see whether a will
has been deposited at the Principal Probate
Registry is part of the routine whenever an
application is made for probate or letters
of administration and so it will always come
to light.
Although solicitors very often do not charge
for holding a will for safe-keeping (hoping,
in general, that they will get the probate
work in due course), banks do usually charge
and so it always seems quite simple to us to
file the original at the Principal Probate
Registry (where it is quite safe and must
come to light as soon as anyone tries to
administer your estate) and to just keep a
copy at home for reference purposes.
Incidentally, in that latter event there is
no prospect of a disgruntled beneficiary
destroying the will after your death as,
regrettably, does sometimes happen.
Although there are many other things to bear
in mind when making a will do remember that
you should always make one if what you wish
to do is not what would happen under the
intestacy rules. And also bear in mind that
marriage and divorce affect wills in very
significant ways so it always pays to
reconsider your will after such an event. |
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