Advance Directives

Your Advance Directives (sometimes mistakenly called your "Advanced Directives") are your expression of the types of healthcare treatment you wish to receive if you are ever in an irreversible condition and unable to speak for yourself. They typically accompany a Lasting Power of Attorney for Health and Welfare.

What exactly are advance directives?

An Advance Directive provides instructions for your future healthcare. You should write them when you are healthy, to come into effect when you are no longer able to speak for yourself. The Advance Directive is sometimes referred to as a "Living Will" and we provide this document under our MyLivingWill™ service.

It should not be confused with your Last Will and Testament, that only comes into effect after you have died. The Advance Directive is in effect only when you are alive. Your Advance Directive is most commonly used together with a Lasting Power of Attorney for Health and Welfare (LPA-HW). The LPA allows you to appoint a person to make decisions on your behalf, but they can turn to your Advance Directives for guidance on those decisions. The LPA-HW can be created on the gov.uk website and must be registered with the government to be legally accepted.

Why is an Advance Directive important?

Your Advance Directive will give guidance on the types of medical treatment you wish to receive. It takes the decision-making away from your family and loved ones. If you become seriously ill, you may lose the ability to participate in decisions about your own treatment, so providing this guidance is a tremendous help to your loved ones.

Living Will

A Living Will is another name for your Advance Directives, and generally states the kind of medical care you want (or do not want) if you become unable to make your own decisions. It is called a Living Will because it takes effect while you are still living.

Here at LegalWills.co.uk, we take care of the Advance Directive for you, through our MyLivingWill™ service.

A "Living Will" goes by many different names. Some examples are: "personal directive", "health care directive", "advance health care directive", or just simply "advance directives". However, it is distinct and different to any Lasting Power of Attorney document.

Regardless of what you call it, the LegalWills.co.uk MyLivingWill™ service will format a legal document that allows you to express your wishes for healthcare if you are ever unable to speak for yourself.

Lasting Power of Attorney for Finances

A Lasting Power of Attorney for Finances is a signed, dated, and witnessed paper naming another person, such as a husband, wife, daughter, son, or close friend, as your authorised spokesperson to make financial decisions for you if you should become unable to make them for yourself.

In the UK, you can create this document free of charge from the gov.uk website. It must be registered with the government for a fee before it will be accepted as a legal document.

A "Power of Attorney" goes by many different names, including: "durable power of attorney", "enduring power of attorney", "continuing power of attorney for property", or "durable power of attorney for finances". In the UK, the government has settled on "lasting Power of Attorney for property and financial affairs".

Will my wishes be honoured if I am not in the UK?

The law on honouring an advance directive from one country to another is inconsistent. However, because your advance directive discusses your wishes regarding medical care, it may be honoured wherever you are, if you make it known that you have an advance directive. But if you spend a great deal of time outside of the UK, you may wish to consider having your advance directive meet the laws of your new home if possible.

Is it a requirement to prepare an Advance Directive?

No, there is no legal requirement to prepare an Advance Directive. You can also prepare one, and then destroy it, or make changes to it at any time.

If you wish to cancel an advance directive while you are in the hospital, you should notify your doctor, your family, and others who may need to know. Even if you do not formally change your advance directive in writing, your wishes stated in person directly to your doctor generally carry more weight than your written document, as long as you are considered to be competent when expressing your wishes.

Make sure that someone, such as your solicitor or a family member, knows that you have an advance directive and knows where it is located. You might also consider the following:
  • Ask your GP to make your advance directive part of your permanent medical record.
  • Keep a copy of your advance directive in a safe place where it can be found easily.
  • Consider creating Keyholders® at LegalWills.co.uk and grant them access to your MyLivingWill™ service.
  • Keep a small card in your purse or wallet stating that you have an advance directive, where it is located and who your agent or proxy is, if you have named one. LegalWills.co.uk allows you to order wallet cards specifically for this purpose.

Is an Advance Directive right for me?

Your Advance Directive serves two key roles. Firstly, it can make your doctor aware of the medical treatment you wish to receive, particularly with respect to "end-of-life" care. These are very personal decisions and should ideally be made when you are healthy and competent.

In addition, by making these decisions yourself, you spare your family the anxiety and trauma that can be associated with making these decisions on behalf of a loved one. Many people create Lasting Powers of Attorney without explaining to their appointee what types of treatment they wish to receive. This is the role of your Advance Directives.

How It Works

When you create a Will or legal document at LegalWills, you can designate up to 20 different Keyholders®. Your chosen Keyholders® will be given the trust and power to unlock specific information within your account such as health care directives, funeral wishes, final messages, uploaded files, Power of Attorney, or Last Will and Testament.

You can also implement security mechanisms to prevent premature access to these documents. The entire process of creating your Will and other legal documents at LegalWills is seamless and iterative, meaning you can continue to make changes until you're happy with the final product.

Create Your Documents in Five Easy Steps

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Create Your Documents

Creating your documents is quick and easy with LegalWills. Simply fill out the required fields and proceed to the next step.

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Select Your Keyholders®

Entrust up to 20 individuals to unlock your wishes when the time is right.

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Edit Your Documents for Up To One Year for Free

Make any changes to your documents using our online service.

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Keyholders® Request Access

When the time is right, your selected Keyholders® will have the ability to unlock your wishes.

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Documents are Released to Keyholders®

When the time comes and your Keyholders® request access to your documents, your wishes will be entrusted in their hands.

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Frequently Asked Questions

There is absolutely no legal requirement to use the services of a solicitor to prepare your Will.

The law requires that the Will is written on a piece of paper and then signed by you in the presence of two witnesses. Once it is signed and witnessed, it becomes a legal Last Will and Testament.

If you need legal advice, you should secure the services of a solicitor, but most people do not need legal advice to prepare a Will. Especially if they are using a service like the one at LegalWills.co.uk.
When you write your Will with a solicitor, you are paying for their training, so that if you needed custom clauses written for unique situations, they would probably be able to do this for you. However, most Wills do not require unique new clauses to be written, and the vast majority of Wills are a compilation of known legal "precedents".

Most solicitors use Will writing software to prepare Wills, and we use that exact same software, but give you direct access to it. You should really be asking why a solicitor charges £800 for about an hour's work.

If you have unusual circumstances, such as a child with special needs, then you may need legal advice. But for the vast majority, you would be paying premium rates for legal advice that you don't need.

For a more thorough explanation, please read our blog article: How much does it cost to write a Will?.

There are no other payments required to prepare your legal Will. You can have a legal Will in your hands for £49.95 with nothing else to pay, ever.

What other options are there?
If you wish, you can have your Will reviewed by one of our solicitors for £69.00. Most people do not need this, and would not benefit from it, but if you have selected an option such as "None of the above. Let me describe in detail how to distribute my estate.", then you may want to consider this.

Your Will must first be printed, and then signed in the presence of two witnesses. If you do not have access to a printer, we can print it for you and mail it out. The cost for this is £9.95, but again, most people do not need this option.

We also offer other services like MyLifeLocker™ and a Living Will. They are not required, but they may be useful to you depending on your situation.

What about document storage?
We do not store physical documents, but we allow you to maintain an account with us if you want to update your document in the future.

The Will service costs £49.95. With this payment, you are able to prepare your Will. It also gives you one year of unlimited updates to the document. You are able to print the document as often as you wish during that first year. You can download it as a PDF or Word file, but to make your document a legal Will, it must first be printed, and then signed in the presence of two witnesses. The online version is there for your convenience only.

If you choose not to maintain an account with us after the first year, your initial payment is all you will ever pay. We do not keep credit card details on file and cannot automatically charge beyond this initial payment.

If you wish, you can choose to store your documents online for longer than a year, which will make it easier to make updates in the future to reflect any changes in your personal or financial situation (rather than returning to a solicitor each time). This is of course optional, but it does make the process of maintaining your document more convenient. £11.95 will give you one additional year of updates, or you can purchase multiple years: 5 years at £29.95, 10 years at £39.95, 25 years at £79.95 (£3.20 per year).

Every time you make an update to your Will, it must first be printed, and then signed in the presence of two witnesses again. If you choose not to maintain an account with us, you will always have your printed, signed document. If you don't need to make changes to that document, it will last you for the rest of your life, whether or not you have an account with us.

What happens if I don't maintain an account, and then in a few years I need to update it?
If your account has not been touched in years, and it is inactive, we reserve the right to remove the account. You will receive an email notification that your account might be removed. However, in practice, we have never actually removed any accounts in our over 24 years of operation.

So, in all likelihood, you will be able to simply login to your account and pay £11.95 to reactivate it. This will give you one year of unlimited updates from the date of payment. (You will not have to pay for your inactive years.)

The UK Lasting Power of Attorney system is controlled by the government. You must use the official government website to create the form, and it must be registered with the government.

Anybody outside of the government who offers a Lasting Power of Attorney service is offering questionable value. The government website does everything that you need, for free. However, the forms must be registered, and this costs £110. There is no way of avoiding this fee.

Go to https://www.gov.uk/power-of-attorney/overview.

Using the MyLivingWill™ service at LegalWills.co.uk, you can prepare your Advance Directives that work with your Lasting Power of Attorney.
Our answer is different depending on what you are comparing us to.

The service at LegalWills.co.uk is significantly better than a blank form Will kit that you can buy on Amazon or WHSmiths. These blank kits do not check for errors, allow you to do things you are legally not allowed to do, and rarely cover backup scenarios. They are actually the most difficult way to prepare a well drafted Will.

We provide the same quality documents as an estate planning solicitor – often word-for-word identical, because we use the same software that they use. We've just adapted it to make it easier to understand, and given you direct access to it. Therefore, you can create a solicitor grade Will, but from the comfort of your own home at less than a tenth of the price.

When compared to other online services, we have honest, up-front pricing that is better than any equivalent service. We also believe that we have the highest quality service online today. In all the time that we have been in business, never once has one of our Wills had an issue going through the probate process. We also offer best-in-class phone and email support if you get stuck.

Some other highlights:

  • Help text every step of the way.   Every page of our service has additional help text to answer your questions. If you get stuck, send us an email and we can help.

  • Create your Will from anywhere at any time.   Our service works on any computer, phone or tablet. Which means you can create or update your Will in the middle of the night in Timbuktu if you need to.

  • Unlimited updates.   If you write your Will with a solicitor, it could be out of date by the time you get home. You don't face that issue with LegalWills.co.uk. If your circumstances change, simply login to your account, update your document, and sign your new Will. There is no charge for updates as long as you maintain a membership.

  • Professional reviews by a solicitor.   Our service works for the vast majority of situations, but on occasion people have unusual circumstances and need the reassurance of a legal professional's eye. We offer this as an option.

  • Our other services.   We don't just do Will writing. We offer a complete portfolio of services that will help you to plan your estate. We have the LifeLocker® executor tool, that allows you to document all of your personal details and assets, and MyVault™ that lets you upload important files. Together with our Keyholder® mechanism, you can be assured that the right information gets into the right hands at the right time (and not before).

  • Privacy and security.   We do not store any information as plain text. We do not store Wills in our database. All of your information is encrypted on our servers. Nobody can access it except you and your designated Keyholders® at the appropriate time. Furthermore, we do not share, trade or sell any of your data with third parties whatsoever.

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