Funeral Homes and Partnerships

Why pre-plan and pre-pay for your funeral?

Once you pass away, there are many difficult decisions to be made. If you have previously not expressed your preferences, then your loved ones will be left with emotionally draining decisions, to be made at a very difficult time.

Do you wish to be buried or cremated? In which cemetery? Where would you like your ashes to go? Who do you want to be at your funeral? Would the funeral service be a sombre reflection on your life, or a celebratory party for a life well lived? Have you expressed to your family your feelings on organ donation?

One of the most difficult decisions to be made is the amount of money to be spent on your funeral. Your loved ones will want to be respectful, but this will be paid for out of your estate, and it is probably money that can be used by your family rather than paying for an expensive coffin. A coffin that will be buried or burned.

But how can you express your wishes to your family without seeming macabre or sombre. It's not something that people want to discuss. If you start to describe your funeral wishes to your family they will likely say "Don't be silly... you're not even 70 yet, you've got years left".

But we have provided a way, and we can ensure that your wishes get to the people who need to know, at the right time, and not before.

By writing down your wishes, you are protecting your loved ones from never-ending difficult decisions, to be made at a time when they are emotionally vulnerable.

At LegalWills.co.uk, we believe that a funeral service should be an expression of your life, and of your personality. You should be able to decide who will attend, what the atmosphere should be like, and where you would like it to be held.

By stating your preferences for your funeral arrangements, you will be able to control costs. Should it be a final fitting tribute to your life on Earth, or should it be a modest affair as you feel that the money could be better spent if it were passed on to a charity or to your family? The decisions that will be left to the organisers of your funeral will require them to make trade-offs on price against worthiness, and these difficult decisions will be made at a time of great loss.

Describe your funeral wishes

There is a common misconception that your funeral wishes should be included in your Last Will and Testament. This is not advisable for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, in the UK, your funeral wishes are not legally binding in the same way as a Last Will and Testament. Your funeral wishes are exactly that --- an expression of your wishes that you pass onto your loved ones. There is no legal requirement for your family and loved ones to honour these wishes. Ultimately, the Executor of your estate has the final say in the style of your funeral service, the amount of money spent, and even the disposition of your body.

At LegalWills.co.uk, we have separated the expression of your funeral wishes and the creation of your Last Will and Testament into two separate services.

You can create your Last Will and Testament using our MyWill™ service. Your Will includes key appointments, such as your Executor and guardians for your children. It also includes a description of the distribution of your possessions and other assets. This includes any charitable bequests.

Separately, we have our MyFuneral™ service. You are able to step through the MyFuneral™ service to describe:

  • Whether or not you have an Existing Will and the location
  • Your preferences for Body or Organ Donation
  • How you wish to have your body handled
  • Final Disposition (buried, cremated or other)
  • Whether or not you have an existing Funeral Plan in place
  • If you have an existing arrangement, or a preferred Mortuary contact
  • A section for a detailed list of Family and Friends to be notified
  • You can write your own Obituary to be published or read at the service
  • If you wish, you can describe your Armed Services Record
  • You can express your preferences for donations to be made by Family and Friends and the target organisation
  • You are able to express your preference for the style and cost of a coffin
  • Any Pre-disposition Ceremonies (visitations, funeral services, religious ceremonies, etc.)
  • Any Final Disposition Ceremony (graveside, burial, interment, ash scattering, etc.)
  • You can write a final Message for loved ones
  • Describe your preferences for a Monument/Marker
  • Express your wishes for what happens after the Funeral

The final document should be a 3-4 page detailed description of your wishes that can be worked on and updated as often as you wish over time.

Pre-plan your funeral

The cost of funerals is rising faster than the rate of inflation. According to the Sun Life Cost of Dying Report 2017, the average cost of a basic funeral rose from £3,897 in 2016, to £4,078 in 2017 - an increase of 4.7%.

Put the decisions in your own hands

There are four steps to protecting your family at an emotionally vulnerable time.

Step 1: You should prepare your Will. This takes about 20 minutes and costs £49.95. There is really no excuse for dying without a Will. You should prepare one today, and then update it throughout your life as your circumstances change.

Step 2: You should describe your funeral wishes. Again, this takes about 20 minutes, but using our MyFuneral™ service. Just step through the series of questions, and then sign your final printed document. Store this document with your Will.

Step 3: Take advantage of our other services like MyKeyholders™, MyMessages™, MyVault™ and MyLifeLocker™ to make sure that you get the right information to the right people at the right time, and not before.

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

file
Create Your Documents

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

key
Select Your Keyholders®

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

pencil
Edit Your Documents for Up To One Year for Free

Make any changes to your documents using our online service.

lock
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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