guardians

One of the most important elements to a Last Will and Testament is the naming of guardians for children. If both parents become unavailable for whatever reason, for example, a common accident. Then the Will appoints a person to take over the personal care of the children. The guardian will be granted custody of the children by the family courts and an appointment made in a Will is the over-riding consideration in naming guardians for children.

How much does it cost to change a Will?

There are different types of change that you may need to make to a Will, and different approaches. You may be surprised when you ask your solicitor or Will writer to make a change, and are quoted £300 or more. This article explains how you can make different types of changes to your Will, and explains the costs involved.

Clerical Errors

You need to simply change the address of somebody named in the Will

If you need to change the address of somebody named in the Will or even your own address, your Will does not need to be updated. You include the address of a beneficiary for two reasons: firstly you must uniquely identify the person, so that if you say

“I leave £1,000 to my friend Brian”

You may find a lot of Brians coming out of the woodwork. However if you say

“I leave £1,000 to my friend Brian Jones, of 123 Factory Street, Rainham, Essex”

There is only one person who could possibly claim to be this particular Brian.

Furthermore, your Executor then has to make sure that Brian receives his £1,000, so putting the full address in the Will may be useful. If you feel that your Executor may struggle to find the beneficiary, by all means include the address, but your Will is written as an instruction to your Executor. It works equally effectively to store your address book with your Will, or alternatively, your Executor could simply ask family members how to contact Brian Jones.

If you move houses, your Executor moves, or any of your beneficiaries change their address, there is no requirement to update your Will. Just make sure that next time you do update the Will, you update the appropriate addresses.

How to change a Will
Do not make changes like this

A person in the Will changes their name

This can happen for people named in a Will who take on a married name. Like the address, as long as it is clear who you are referring to, there is no legal requirement to change your Will. If you refer to your beneficiary as “my daughter Susan Brown” and she takes on the married name of “Susan Green” it is still obvious who this Susan is. Particularly as she was Susan Brown at the time the Will was written.

There may be slight additional administrative steps for probate if your Executor has changed their name, but nothing that cannot be easily resolved.

You have misspelled a person’s name

It can happen – you wrote “Paul MacKartney” and it should have been “McCartney”. Again, if this is a beneficiary, it is not critical, as long as the instruction is clear to your Executor and it is obvious who should be receiving the bequest. In this case, Mr. McCartney would not lose his inheritance just because the name was misspelled. The law requires the Executor to do their best to understand the intentions of the Will. A bequest is never forfeited because of a clerical error.

But this could create a slight issue for the Executor if they are probating the Will and the name is very different. This could in theory also be an issue if you have used a nickname instead of their correct name. Certainly, don’t refer to your Executor as “Spud Jones” when their real name is Neville. You want to give your Executor the minimum amount of friction possible to probate your Will, and this is just inviting a problem.

To summarize, Minor spelling mistakes for a beneficiary’s name are not an issue. However, a significant difference in the Executor’s name should be fixed.

How much does it cost to change a clerical error in your Will?

This type of error in a Will should not cost anything. You can actually manually write on the Will, and then initial that change. You should also have two witnesses initial the change. You are not materially changing a bequest, beneficiary or an appointment, and so you would not need to pay a solicitor to make this type of change.

Changing a person or a bequest in the Will

Creating a new beneficiary in the Will

This is where things start to become more significant. Suppose that you have written your Will and you are completely happy with it. But then you are touched by the work of your local hospital, church or another charity, and you would like to recognise their work in your Will. You would like to add a bequest of £5,000 to that particular charity.

In this case, it is a bad idea to write on the Will, because it is very difficult to establish when that change was made. Although this is a legally acceptable approach to updating the Will (if the change is initialled by yourself and two witnesses), it is wide open to a challenge. Particularly if there is a handwritten insertion of

“and £10,000 to my friend Brian Anderson”

Just imagine if Brian Anderson was the person who was entrusted with the storage and care of the Will. You are simply inviting problems.

Changing an appointee in the Will

There are a few different appointees in your Will: your Executor, your pet caregiver and your guardians for young children. We recommend that you do not handwrite the alteration on your Will when changing any of these.

If the name of your Executor has been manually changed on the Will, the probate courts could reject your Executor’s application for probate.

Manually changing your named pet caregiver may not be an issue unless you feel that this could cause some family conflict. Sometimes a significant amount of money can be involved in this appointment, so it is advisable to make a more formal change to your Will.

When you name a guardian for your young children in your Will, you are providing guidance to the courts. Clearly things can happen between the writing of the Will, and the Will coming into effect, and a change of circumstances may make your selection unqualified. Your chosen guardian also reserves the right to not take on the appointment.

But if there are no changes in circumstances, then the guardian named in your Will would likely be the legal guardian appointed by the courts. Again, we recommend not changing this person with a handwritten annotation on the Will.

How to change a person or a bequest in the Will

There are two correct approaches to changing a person or a bequest in your Will.

You can write a codicil

Codicils were very popular before we had computers and printers. In the days when a Will had to be handwritten, or typed, it was very inconvenient to have to retype the whole document to incorporate one small change. The workaround was to prepare a separate document that made reference to the main document and explained the change. It would say words to the effect of

“In the attached document ‘Last Will and Testament of me, John Smith’ for clause 3 ‘Executor’ replace the name Brian Green, with the name James White of 3, Railway Street, Plymouth, Devon”

The document would then be signed in the presence of two witnesses and then attached to the Will.

Of course, with the technology that we have today, it is just as convenient to prepare a new Will. The signing requirements for a codicil are the same as for a new Will. Codicils can be confusing, particularly, if there is a change to something described in an existing codicil – it can be unclear which parts of the Will are being updated.

We have written in more detail about the problems of codicils in another article.

You can prepare a new Will

In modern times, codicils are rarely the best option. We always recommend preparing a new Will if you are making material changes to your Will that include a change to a beneficiary, bequest or appointee in the Will.

If you use a Will writing service like the one at LegalWills.co.uk, this is very straightforward. You would simply login to your account, click through to the page where you name the Executor, make the change and then print the new version of your Will. The new document must then be signed in the presence of two witnesses.

Naming an Executor at LegalWills.co.uk

If you have an active account, there is absolutely no charge for doing this, and the process takes about 5 minutes. You can updated your Will from your armchair at home. Which brings us to the main topic of this article.

How much does it cost to change a Will?

There are generally three approaches to writing your Will, which means that there are also three approaches to changing your Will.

If you have handwritten your Will

Legally, you can write your Will on a piece of paper. If it is entirely handwritten, it is called a holographic Will, and this is legal in the UK. However, it is generally a bad idea. Aretha Franklin the Queen of Soul chose this method. She died in 2018 and her assets are all still tied up in legal disputes that are costing millions of pounds.

Aretha Franklin’s Will

The cost to make changes to this type of Will, is, errr, nothing. However, the cost to your family and loved ones is incalculable. There will most likely be confusion, disputes, and a lot of money spent on solicitor’s fees.

If you have written your Will with a Solicitor

This is one of the most confusing aspects of making a change to an existing Will. If you return to your solicitor requesting a change, your solicitor will almost always recommend that you prepare a new Will. In fact, they will usually refuse to work with a single clause without reviewing the complete document. As a result, it can seem to be an exorbitant fee. Usually to make a change to a bequest, or beneficiary within a Will, a solicitor will charge about £300 to £500 – the cost of preparing the initial Will.

In fact, many people who come to LegalWills.co.uk do so after experiencing this very thing. They wrote their Will with a solicitor and then realised that it would cost them several hundreds of pounds every time they needed to make a change. It’s also worth keeping in mind that your Will may need to be changed many times throughout your life – whenever anybody named in the Will has a change of circumstances.

For example, if your alternate Executor has been taken ill. If you have written your Will with a solicitor you probably wouldn’t make the effort to set up an appointment to make that minor change to the document. But that leaves your Will less than complete as you do not have a backup Executor. You would have to weigh up the cost and inconvenience of making that change against the risk of having no backup in place.

If you have written your Will with an online Will writing service

This is one of the key advantages to using an online Will writing service like the one at LegalWills.co.uk. We provide a complete review of different online Will writing services elsewhere on this website.

Most online Will writing services allow you to make changes to your Will any time you have an active account. You simply login to your account, navigate to the part of the Will that needs to be updated and change the information. You then download and print a new document to be signed in the presence of witnesses.

The cost for updating your Will with an online Will writing service is usually nothing at all.

What do I do with my existing Will?

If you have previously written your Will with a solicitor, and have been quoted several hundreds of pounds to make an update, you may be considering using an online Will service like ours at LegalWills.co.uk. But it may be awkward to have the discussion with your solicitor asking for them to dispose of your existing Will because you have chosen to use an online Will writing service.

The good news is that you don’t need to have this discussion.

If you prepare a new Will using the service at LegalWills.co.uk it automatically revokes (cancels) any previous Will or codicil. This means that once it is signed by you, dated and the witnesses sign, any previous Will is automatically nullified. Your old Will does nothing at this point.

Ideally, you shouldn’t have a number of different versions of your Will in circulation (this is one of the problems with Aretha Franklin’s affairs, she had a number of Wills tucked away all over her house). But if it isn’t practical to destroy old versions of your Will, it doesn’t matter too much. Only your most recently signed document is your Last Will and Testament. Your previous Wills do nothing.

Update your Will today

If you have an existing Will and you are looking for a fast, affordable way to make a change to this Will, we recommend that you prepare a Will with LegalWills.co.uk. The cost is £49.95 and it takes about 20 minutes.

Get started….

Do I need a Will if I have no assets? Yes. A Will does so much more.

At LegalWills.co.uk, one of the most frequent questions we hear is “Do I need a Will?”.

When the answer is “yes”, we then hear the familiar response “But, I don’t own anything?”

If only things were that simple….

Do I need a Will?

British wealth

In 2014, the average net worth of a British adult was £147,134.  Now, depending on the equity built up in the home, if you remove that value from the net worth it still comes in at around £20,000. Therefore, even if you don’t own your own house, there could still be well over £20,000 that makes up a part of your estate after death.

According to the pension giant Aviva, most British middle aged people have typically built up private retirement savings and investments worth £53,793. Now, you might think that these figures don’t apply to you but equity can be found in unexpected sources from ISA’s to insurance plans and even the personal items you own within your house. Continue reading →

Estate planning and divorce – What you really need to know

Divorce is a very stressful time and there are many things that you need to think about. One of the most crucial things that you need to address as soon as you decide to separate is estate planning and divorce.

You may already have a Last Will and Testament, but you need to change it. If you don’t have a Will you need to make one. It is very important that you understand the law relating to estate planning and divorce.

There could be very serious consequences if you do not take the appropriate steps to deal with estate planning and divorce. You need to take act now to protect yourself and your children.

Often people think that they can wait until after the divorce to deal with estate planning. This is a common misconception, and it can be a dangerous mistake.

What Effect Does Separation Have on my Will?

The simple answer is that separation has no effect on the status of your Will. If you die whilst you are separated from your spouse your existing Will is still valid.

You need to remember that a divorce usually takes many months to finalise. It can sometimes even take years to settle. There can be a very long time between filing a divorce and the Decree Absolute being granted, so you need to protect yourself and your children during this time.

If you have a Will which leaves everything to your spouse they could inherit everything, even though you no longer live together. Therefore, estate planning and divorce is an extremely important issue.

You can make a new Will now which will be valid after the Decree Absolute. Divorce does not invalidate a will. By planning in this way, you can make sure that your wishes of what happens to your estate are updated.

What is the Effect of a Decree Absolute on an Existing Will?

A divorce decree does not invalidate a Last Will and Testament. This a very important point. There are a lot of misconceptions out there about estate planning and divorce. This is a particularly dangerous myth.

What happens when your Decree Absolute is granted? Any gift or appointment of your former spouse takes effect as it they had died on the day that your Decree became Absolute.

In plain language, this means that if you left your whole estate to your former spouse your back up plan will come into effect. If you appointed them as a guardian or an executor this appointment is now invalid. Also, if you left a gift to your ex-spouse this will go back into your estate and be distributed in accordance with the other provisions of the will.

Will the Laws of Intestacy Help?

Everyone should have a Will. If you do not set out exactly what happens to your estate when you die, then your estate will be subject to the laws of intestacy. Most people don’t understand the consequences of this. Some people falsely believe that their children will inherit all the money anyway. This is a dangerous misconception. Here is what would happen if you died intestate.

The first £250,000 would go to your spouse. It doesn’t matter that you are separated, nor does it matter that you are waiting for your divorce to be final. Prior to Decree Absolute your spouse will inherit at least the first £250,000.

If you have an estate worth more than £250,000, half of the remainder would go to your children. The other half of the remainder would go to your spouse.

Looking at the laws of intestacy your spouse gets either the whole or the bulk of the estate and your children could get nothing.

If you do not have any children your spouse will receive the first £450,000 of your estate. Consequently, your spouse may inherit everything. Unless you have a very amicable relationship with your soon to be ex-spouse, you probably don’t want this to happen!

Do you want to leave this up to the laws of intestacy? Wouldn’t it be best simply to make a new Will? At LegalWills.co.uk it takes about 20 minutes and costs £39.95.

It is Fine – I Don’t Have Much Money

Some people will not have an estate which is very large. However, you need to think about whether this applies to you. Do you have a house which is worth more than you think? Or perhaps you have a life insurance policy which will pay out in the event of your death. You could even win the lottery! Because of this uncertainty, it is never a good idea to simply think that you will not be affected the consequences of not taking care of estate planning and divorce.

You Need to Think About Guardians for the Children

It is essential that everyone who has young children makes a Will. This is not only so that you can make financial provision for them in the event of your death. You can also appoint legal guardians for your children in your Last Will and Testament. It may be that your existing Will appoints your spouse (if they are not the biological parent of your child). After separation, you may no longer think that this is appropriate if your spouse is not their biological parent.

If you want your spouse to remain as a guardian it is also important that you make a new Will. Remember that the effect that a Decree Absolute has on an existing Will. An ex-spouse is deemed to have died on the day the Decree Absolute takes effect. This means that the appointment of them as a guardian would be invalid. If you want it to continue you should make a new Will appointing them.

Beware the Housing Trap

If you own a house jointly with your spouse you must think very carefully how to deal with this. Making the wrong decisions, or bad assumptions can result in your estranged or former spouse inheriting the house even if you make a new Last Will and Testament.

If you jointly own a house it is most likely that you own it as Joint Tenants. What this means is that you each own 100% of it. Therefore, if you die and you own a house as a joint tenant it will not become part of your estate. The other owner will inherit automatically and whatever you say in your Will about it is irrelevant. It will not be part of your estate and you cannot give it away in your Will. If you have children and this is the only asset of your estate this could mean that your spouse or former spouse inherits the house. The children may get nothing from your estate if there are no other assets.

Other ways to jointly own a home

Fortunately, there is an alternative way to own a house. You can own the house as Tenants in Common. This means that you can each own a set percentage of the house. We don’t mean your spouse owns the upstairs and you own the downstairs! It means that you can specify which percentage of the house you each own. You can own it in equal shares or any other percentage that you want to agree on. This is known as owning as Tenants in Common.

If you own a house as Tenants in Common your percentage of the house will form part of your estate. This means that you can leave your share to whoever you want to in your Will. If you don’t have a Will it would become subject to the rules on intestacy and your spouse may inherit your share. This is why it is important to make a new Will!

When you separate, you should ask your solicitor how to make any necessary amendment to how you own your house. They can give you advice about how you can easily sever the joint tenancy. This is an easy step, but you must do it in the correct way.

Estate planning and divorce – In Conclusion

It is essential that you think about estate planning and divorce. If you don’t your children and loved ones could be left with nothing from your estate. You can easily fix this, but you need to take steps as soon as possible. Making a will is easy and not expensive. Do this to protect your loved ones and have your estate distributed the way that you want it to be

Naming a Guardian for Children – why you need a Will

“My husband and I are interested in creating a will. Our primary reason is to ensure our child’s care and safety. There are blood relatives that we do not feel are suited to take custody of our child. Can your service help us cover this concern in our wills? We need to name a guardian for our children.”

Guardian

Everybody needs a Will, but there is one group for whom a Last Will and Testament is invaluable – parents of young children. Writing a Will can offer you the peace of mind in knowing that your children will grow up in a loving and safe environment. A Will allows parents to make their own decisions about Guardianship by expressing their preference for who the Guardian for their children should be. A Will also allows parents to explain why their chosen Guardian would be appropriate for their child, and if all else is equal, the family courts will appoint the named Guardian in most circumstances. Continue reading →

The Ten Best Reasons to Write a Will now

We know that most people have not written their Will. These people fall into two camps; the group who think it’s important, but haven’t got around to it yet, but hopefully they will write a Will at some time in the future. The second group are those who have the “why do I care? I’ll be dead anyway” approach. Although they’ve hopefully spent their life thinking of other people, they feel content simply letting their family and loved ones sort everything out once they are gone.

Unfortunately, they don’t understand that taking just 20 minutes now, can save their family from distress, acrimony, family feuds, and potentially expensive legal battles.

Surely I’m overstating the impact of not having a Will? Let me explain ten good reasons why you should write a Will today, based on our 15 years of experience in dealing with distraught family members whose loved one died without a Will in place.

Continue reading →