MyExpatWill™ (U.K.) - Write a Will that Deals with your UK Assets
"I used your service to write a Will for my dear wife Christine who passed
away this year. The Will was easy to fill out and very straightforward. I never
had one problem arise because of the Will." ---
Keith Sutton Read more
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Do you own assets in the UK, but you now live overseas? Or have you arrived in the UK, but you already have a Will that covers your assets in your country of origin?
Our MyExpatWill™ (U.K.) service allows you to create a legal Last Will and Testament that deals exclusively with your UK assets.
It can work together with any Will you may have written to cover assets in another country.
If you have assets in more than one country, we recommend that you prepare a Will for each country in which you hold assets.
Our Expat Will service allows you to cover your UK assets in your estate plan.
Your Will can be written from anywhere in the world and it can legally take care of your UK assets.
Do you own assets in Canada, but live in a different country?
Learn about the MyExpatWill™ (Canada) service
Do you own assets in the United States, but live in a different country?
Learn about the MyExpatWill™ (U.S.) service
If you have assets in more than one country, or you are living in a different country to your assets, then you need an Expat Will.
Your assets must be probated in the country in which they are located.
Probate is the process by which your Will is validated as your official Last Will and Testament, and by which your Executor is officially granted the powers to act as your estate administrator.
Probate courts in each country will generally only accept a Will written under the laws of that country.
So, presenting a Will written under the laws of Dubai, to a probate court in England, is not going to work.
This is why we recommend that you prepare a Will for each country in which you hold assets.
Our Expat Will service works for a number of different situations. For example:
- If you are from the U.K. living abroad, and need a Will to cover your U.K. assets, you can use the MyExpatWill™ service to create a Will, whether or not you have a Will in your country of residence.
- If you are new to England or Wales and have assets in another country, and already have a Will in place for that country, you can use the MyExpatWill™ service to create a Will for your U.K. assets.
The above examples are for the U.K., but the MyExpatWill™ service also supports the creation of Expatriate Wills for assets in the United States and Canada.
Beware of standard Will services or DIY Will Kits.
You cannot use a standard Will service to cover assets in the UK if you plan to also prepare a Will for assets in another country.
A standard Will service cannot cover assets outside of the UK, and cannot be used in conjunction with any other Will.
At a minimum, a standard Will is likely to revoke all other Wills, which could include a Will that you have written to cover assets outside of the UK.
Our Expat Will service has been specifically designed for this situation, where you need a Will that exclusively deals with your UK assets.
Do not even consider using a blank form Will kit. A blank form DIY Will kit will create a number of headaches for your family and probably will not work for you.
Unfortunately, the problems will only surface after you have died.
Read what makes us better
Writing an Expat Will used to be difficult.
If you are living outside of the UK and need a Will to cover your UK assets, then your options are to write the Will yourself,
or to use an estate-planning solicitor who is licensed to practice law in the UK. This means travelling to the UK to prepare your Will,
and travelling to meet your solicitor every time you need to update the Will. It is an expensive and inconvenient process.
Fortunately, the team at LegalWills.co.uk have finally capitalised on the power of the Internet to allow you to prepare your UK Will from anywhere in the world.
We give you direct access to the software used by solicitors so that you can make your Will yourself, conveniently and affordably.
Our service steps you through nine sections. Every step is written in plain language so you don't need any legal knowledge or expertise to prepare a solicitor-grade Will.
Simply answer the questions and your Will is compiled for printing. You then print the document and sign it in the presence of two witnesses to create your legal Last Will and Testament.
We provide plenty of online help every step of the way.
Circumstances change.
It is highly unlikely that you will only write your Will once in your life. Your own personal or financial circumstances may change,
or there could be a change in the life of anybody named in your Will. If you get married, divorced, or have children, then you need to update your Will.
But if one of your beneficiaries has a change of fortune, or your Executor has a health issue, you still need to update your Will.
Fortunately, if you use the MyExpatWill™ service at LegalWills.co.uk, you can just login to your account, make the change, print a new document,
and sign it to create a new, up-to-date Last Will and Testament.
Our service has been developed by top solicitors in the UK with years of experience in drafting Wills and Trusts.
We are confident that our service will provide you with the highest quality document that will, in most cases, be word-for-word identical to one prepared by a solicitor.
However, if you have particular circumstances and feel that you need the peace of mind of a document review, we offer this too.
After you have completed your Will, just select the option to have your document reviewed by one of our estate planning solicitors.
You will receive constructive comments and feedback on your Will from a qualified legal professional.
There is no better time than now to write your Will.
Most people do not have a Will, even if they live in the UK with all of their assets in the UK. The number of Expats with an up-to-date Will is even lower.
The cost and inconvenience of preparing a Will for UK assets when you live outside of the UK is enough of a barrier to put it off until some time in the future.
You may feel that the distribution of your assets is obvious anyway, or that your assets are not significant enough to worry about.
But there is never a situation where it works better to not have a Will. Without a Will, the courts will appoint an estate administrator on your behalf,
and will divide your assets according to intestate law. These decisions will be taken out of your hands and will almost certainly not match your intentions.
Most importantly, the process is a long drawn out headache for your family and loved ones; a hassle that can be avoided with a Last Will and Testament.
Create your Expatriate Will for England or Wales right now using the MyExpatWill™ (U.K.) wizard
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MyExpatWill™- Frequently Asked Questions
Your citizenship and residency are not as relevant to your estate planning as the location of your assets.
If you have assets in the UK, you should use this service if you live overseas, or if you have a Will that covers assets in another country.
Your nationality and citizenship are not relevant.
Yes. If you live in the UK, and all of your assets are in the UK, you should use the
MyWill™ service.
However, if your assets are in the UK but you live outside of the UK, use the MyExpatWill™ service.
Or, if you have assets in the UK, and also have a Will for assets held in another country, use the MyExpatWill™ service.
You need a Will to cover all of your assets. We generally recommend that you prepare a Will for every country in which you hold assets.
This means that if you live in Spain, or Dubai, but still have a home in the UK, you need a Will written under UK law to cover that home.
If you do not have a Will, then the home will pass under the laws of intestacy. This will be unlikely to match your wishes.
If you now live in the UK, but have moved here from India, or Europe, but still have a home or assets in that country,
then you should use the MyExpatWill™ service to cover your new UK assets. This Will can work alongside any Will you have written for the assets you have left behind.
If you die without a Will covering all of your assets, you are placing a significant burden on your family and loved ones.
The MyExpatWill™ service works for the vast majority of situations.
However, there are still circumstances where we would recommend that you seek legal advice.
In particular:
- If you are planning to disinherit your spouse, young children, or any other dependents.
- If there are any doubts about your mental capacity and this could be used as a challenge to your Will.
- If you are under the age of 18.
- If you have a large, complex estate and feel that you would benefit from some advice on estate planning and tax reduction.
- If you need to provide for long term medical care for a dependent.
- If you think that somebody may challenge your Expatriate Will in court or you have any other doubts about your situation.
If you fit any of these profiles, we recommend that you seek legal advice.
However, we still feel that stepping through our service would be excellent preparation for a meeting with your solicitor.
We would advise against this. After you die, your Will must be verified, and your Executor must be appointed according to the designation in your Will.
This process is called "probate". Once your Will is probated, your Executor is given a "grant of representation"
(otherwise known as a "grant of probate", "letters of administration" or "letters of administration with a will").
This document allows them to go to your bank and financial institutions to gather your assets.
But a probate court in the UK would not accept a Will written under say, the laws of China, so your Executor will never be appointed estate administrator.
The banks will not release the funds on the basis of a Will written in Chinese, they will only release the funds to an Executor with the grant of administration.
Without a UK Will, this process will be a headache and take a very long time.
If you prepare a Will for your UK assets, written under UK law, the Executor's task will be much simpler.
A few decades ago, some countries worked together to pass the The Uniform International Wills Act.
The goal was to allow a single Will to handle assets held in multiple countries.
Unfortunately, only a few countries signed up for it, and within those countries, adoption of the law was inconsistent.
In Canada and the United States, some States and Provinces support it, but others do not.
The U.K. does support it, but the vast majority of EU countries do not (France yes, Spain and Germany no).
We would not recommend trying to prepare a Will under The Uniform International Wills Act.
It offers no advantage over preparing a separate Will for each country in which you hold assets.
Blank form kits are a problem. Some are out of date, some are written for other countries, and none of them cover assets held in multiple countries.
We reviewed a number of leading DIY Will kits and were appalled at the lack of quality:
Read about it here.
Our service is fully interactive. You can access it from anywhere in the world, from your phone, computer or tablet.
You can update your Will whenever you wish, as often as you wish.
We have offered the service for over
24
years,
and this has allowed us to fine tune the interaction and online help to answer the questions as they come to mind.
You can complete your Will in 20 minutes, or take 6 months if you wish.
You step through the service at your own pace to make sure that your document is exactly what you need.
And if you are not sure, we offer a full 30 day, no questions asked, money back guarantee. We stand behind our service.
But our Will service is not all we offer. You can use it in conjunction with
MyMessages™,
MyLifeLocker™,
MyFuneral™, and
MyVault™ to complete a modern estate plan.
Our MyExpatWill™ service allows you to prepare a legal Last Will and Testament to cover your assets in the UK.
For
£49.95
you can prepare your Will and you have one year of unlimited updates to that document.
You can optionally choose to maintain an account with us either year by year or in bundles of 5, 10, 25 years or lifetime.
We do not keep credit card details on file, so we will never automatically charge you anything.
For us to charge you, you will have to step through the payment process each time.
The complete pricing structure is available on our
Products & Prices page.
To write a Will that is legal under the laws of England and Wales, it must be written or printed on paper and then signed in the presence
of two adult witnesses who are not beneficiaries in the Will. There is no legal requirement to use the services of a solicitor to prepare
a legal Last Will and Testament.
If you need legal advice, then you should work with a solicitor. But most people do not need legal advice to make a Will.
If you read the final document and it reflects your wishes, then it will be a perfectly legal Will once it is signed and witnessed.
More details on the process to be followed for creating a legal document are included in the help text of the MyExpatWill™ service.
If these instructions are followed, then your Expatriate Will is a legally binding document.
We provide detailed directions on this within our service. But in summary, you need to download and print the document,
you then gather together with two witnesses in a room, you declare to the witnesses that you are signing your Will,
you sign, and they then sign in your presence and in the presence of each other.
Your witnesses must be independent and have nothing to gain from the contents of the Will
(a beneficiary cannot be a witness, nor the spouse of a beneficiary).
Your Executor can serve as a witness, as long as they are not a beneficiary.
There is no requirement to have the document signed by a solicitor, notarised or registered with the courts.
The Will is registered after you have died, but all the time you are alive, you simply keep it somewhere safe,
in a place that is known and accessibly to your Executor. At the appropriate time, the Executor will submit the Will for probate (after you have died).
Each time you wish to update your Will, you should step through the service, download and print the new document,
and then sign this in the presence of two witnesses. Ideally, you should destroy the old Will.
If you go through a significant life event, you should update your Will.
This includes a change in marital status, or the birth or death of a child.
But you should also update your Will if somebody mentioned in your Will has a change of circumstance.
If your alternate Executor has a health emergency, update your Will.
If a charity becomes a part of your life, change your Will and add them as a beneficiary.
We offer optional account extension options right through to a lifetime of unlimited updates to your Will.
If you fall in and out of favour with your beneficiaries, you can now quickly and easily update your Will to reflect your most current sentiments.
You should give some thought to your main decisions before starting the process.
If you do this, you can prepare your Will in as little as 20 minutes.
Particularly if all of your UK assets are going to a single beneficiary.
But our service allows you to create a very sophisticated Will with unlimited beneficiaries.
For some people it may take days, or weeks to prepare their Will.
You have up to one year to complete your Will once you pay for the service.
So you will have plenty of time to discuss your decisions with family members.
You can start today, and complete the Will over the next few months if you wish.
Yes. We have been in business since 2001, and the protection of client data is our first priority.
We do not sell, exchange, trade or share any customer information with any third party whatsoever.
We have also taken significant steps in the field of data encryption and security to ensure that your information is protected.
We provide more detail about this on our
Security page.
Years ago, joint Wills used to be a popular time saving approach to Will writing.
It saved the effort of handwriting or typing two similar Wills, by just writing one document and have it express the needs of two people.
This was also back in a time when a husband was considered to own the property and the wife kind of had access to it.
Nowadays, nobody writes joint Wills. Each partner owns half of any jointly held assets, and each spouse can dispose of their half however
they wish in their Will (jointly owned houses are a special exception). Typically, each person names their partner as the main beneficiary
with a backup plan in case they are both involved in a common accident. This is know as having "Mirror Wills" and is supported through our service.
You don't need to pay the full amount twice.
The first Will is
£49.95.
The second one is discounted by 40% so will cost
£29.97.
Do not prepare a joint Last Will and Testament. They can cause serious problems for a surviving spouse.
Our service has been developed by estate planning professionals to give you the tools to prepare your own Will.
We do not offer one-to-one legal advice.
You do not need a solicitor to prepare your Expat Will. You can do it yourself using our service.
All of the legal wording used in our Wills is derived from established legal precedents, so the final document
is likely to be word-for-word identical to one prepared by a solicitor practicing law in the UK today.
We do offer an optional service which allows you have your completed Expatriate Will reviewed by one of our solicitors,
who is able to check for consistency and completeness within your final document.
Please start by stepping through our service. There is plenty of information on each page describing what you can and cannot do within your Expat Will.
You will find most of your questions answered within the service.
For information about the other services available, or about LegalWills.co.uk in general,
you can browse this website or send an email to
[email protected].
We will be happy to answer any questions you may have.
Create your Expatriate Will for England or Wales right now using the MyExpatWill™ (U.K.) wizard
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