Second marriages

Second marriage and DIY Wills

If you are in a second marriage (or your parents are) this could be a very important piece of information.

If you have bought a property with your new spouse you may be unintentionally bringing about the disinheritance of your children.

Firstly, if you die first and pass everything to your spouse in your Will, your bereaved spouse can change his or her Will after you die. This may not happen because your spouse will do the right thing.

However if you plan to leave your share of the property to your children when you die that might not happen either. If the property is owned as joint tenants, which is the norm for a married couple, you will not be able to gift the property in your Will. It is already owned by your spouse. The law says you both own 100% when you are alive and if one dies the survivor owns 100%. Bad maths but good law.

The answer might well be to have a Life Interest Trust in your Will to allow your surviving spouse to use the property whilst alive but pass on the value of your share to your children when s/he dies. Good all round.

Unforuntaely this is not suitable for a DIY Will and so you will need to seek advice from a lawyer on this one.

DIY Wills – is there a safer way to do them?

Are you worried about doing a DIY Will?

If you have decided to do your own Will and are looking to buy a DIY Will Kit you should be aware of the potential problems that can occur.

The first thing is deciding hat your DIY Will Kit is suitable for your circumstances. e.g. is it the right jurisdiction e.g. England & Wales, and is it OK for someone with young children.

After that there is the question of proper attestation (signing). It is a straightforward procedure and seems simple enough AND you should get full instructions to guide you through the process.

The problem is with the two winesses there are three or four people involved in this signing process. Things can and do go wrong. it happens a lot.

So if you make your own will and getthe sttestation wrong when do you find out? Perhaps nobody will until you have died and that might be a bit late.

The best solution to this problem is to have it checked. There is a service that provides a DIY Will Kit and a lawyer check (and a second one at no extra charge should you need it) called DIY Will Plus and it is currently £40 for a single Will and £60 for mirror Wills. Check it out here http://lawscape.co.uk/do-it-yourself-wills

Attestation

DIY Will Attestation Problems

For those of you who opt for the DIY Will route there is one

major pitfall that awaits. Getting the attestation,i.e. the

signing, of the Will done correctly.

In England and Wales the Will has to be signed by the Testator, the person who is making the Will, in the presence of two suitable witnesses.

Then the two witnesses must in turn sign the Will and give their details for identification purposes.

The witnesses should not be beneficiaries or married to beneficiaries in the Will or they will not be able to inherit anything from that Will. So it would be or could be a massive mistake.

The problem is mistakes are made in this process time and time again. It sounds so simple but from experience it does too frequently go wrong.

So with your DIY Will how can you be sure that it is has been attested (signed) correctly. The only way really is to have it checked by a suitable lawyer.

You do a Will for peace of mind but can you get it if you are not sure that the Will is actually valid?

Get more DIY Will information at http://diy-will.co.uk.

Is a DIY Will Kit Valid

Are DIY Will Kits Valid

Many people do wonder if Do It Yourself Wills are valid. The answer is yes provided that all the rules regarding Will validity are followed correctly.

Amongst other things, an English Will needs to be signed by the testator (the person making the Will) in front of two witnesses who in turn need to sign the Will proving that they have witnessed the tesator signing the Will. After that it is normal for witnesses to put their address and occupation. This is not a legal requirement but is there to enable witnesses to be found if the probate Registry has a query.

Other issues can arise that make the Will less effective or fail in parts. If you make contradictory gifts e.g. “I leave everything to my wife and I leave my car to my son”. A frequent and serious problem is trying to make a gift of property owned a a joint tenant. This cannot happen and can lead to unintentional disinheriting of children of a previous marriage.

So the true answer is yes there is no impediment to writing your own Will using a DIY Will Kit, but the real issue is will it be completed correctly and in a way that serves the purposes and wishes of the testator.

This problem is exacerbated by the fact that in most cases DIY Wills are attested and put away for the day they are needed with nobody being in a position to check on validity. The best safeguard is to have your DIY Will checked by a lawyer.

Holographic Wills

A holographic will is a last will and testament that has been entirely handwritten and signed by the person making the will i.e. the testator.

in the UK this ultimate type of DIY will still needs to be witnessed in the normal way.

In some jurisdictions, notably a number of U.S. States unwitnessed holographic wills are treated equally to witnessed wills. There will be some requirements to be met first though.

There must be sufficient evidence that the person did actually make the will, that there was mental capacity to do so and there was a clear wish to distribute his or her estate contained in the will.

Holographic wills are often created in emergency situations when the testator and near death. It is not advisable to adopt this DIY will route but if there is no alernative it may prove better than nothing. Getting the will accepted and probated make take some time and require additional evuidence but as noted above they normally come about in difficult circumstances.

Have Your DIY Will Checked

DIY Wills can be a cheap and effective way to write your own Will. The operative word is can.

A major drawback is having gone to the trouble of working out what you want to do with your assets and wordly wealth, deciphering the Will instructions and putting them in writing, you muck up the Attestation.

Why pick on the Attestation?
Getting the signing and witnessing procedure wrong is the most common reason for invalidating a will.

Instructions look straightforward – well they do to me anyway – but with 3 or 4 people involved it is too easy to get it wrong.

The best course of action is to have your Will checked by a professional – a qualified lawyer who can confirm it is in legal form and valid on its face. This is exactly the sort of check that the Probate Registry does before a will can be accepted. If it is not valid you wil be intestate and the whole exercise would not only be a waste of time, effort and money but those relyig on it might well lose out in a big way.

DIY Wills on eBay

I did a check on DIY Wills for sale no eBay today and amongst the usual suspects of fairly reputable ones there was an offer of 2 single A4 page Will blanks with an example to copy. This was for £1.99 plus 41 pence postage.

This is the cheapest Do It Yourself Will I have found so far.

Now I can’t be sure how good or bad this offer is but I did notice a that this seller was also offering a DIY General Power of Attorney for the same price. It was plain from the description of this document, to adapt to your own requirements at home, that it must be treated with caution. In the ‘blurb’ it was suggested that it was useful for a time when you couldn’t look after your own affairs. WRONG. You need a Lasting Power of Attorney for that.

So if that is anything to go on it would likely be a DIY Will disaster waiting to happen. seriously would you trust this from a guy who is selling cheap jewellry but clearly many people do as 30 have been sold in the last 30 days.

DIY Wills can be dangerous

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsuC3VhRjSE

This is a review of a DIY will bought cheaply on eBay.

It is, in all fairness, probably as bad as you can get but it does serve to show what sort of problems DIY Wills can throw up and also be very careful about buying very cheap DIY Will Kits from the likes of eBay.

Apart from having some confusing instructions and not may at that the signing or attestation box is very small which could put witnesses into some difficulty working out where to put their signatures.

DIY Wills information

DIY Wills are big business

Each year hundreds of thousands are sold. The real problem is are they worth having. The simple answer is that is they are if they are suitable for your circumstances AND they are attested properly.

Experience shows that some people completely muck up writing them out in the first place. Crossings out and amendments could be enough to invalidate the Will.

Not understanding about property ownership (joint tenacy and tenants-in-common) can fool people into believing they are leaving an inheritance to their children but it goes to their new spouse instead. It’s about not appreciating the problems that can come from second marraige when you have children from the first.

Then there is the attestation issue. People get this wrong even when the signing is being supervised by a lawyer. This is very serious as one misstake here might mean the whole Will is invalid. This area is crucial and is easily got wrong even when teh instructions are well laid out, easy to follow and understand. Its the Ikea syndrome – all the instructions there in fromnt of you but you staill can’t put the flat-pack together properly!
so understanding the issues , the problems and the pitfalls of making your DIY Will are really very important.