Wills & Tax Planning

You should definitely take steps to review your will if you move house. Although you may not need to make any changes to your will, you should include a note with your will to confirm what your new address is.

Moving house may reflect a change in your personal circumstances, such as getting married or going through a divorce. These can also be reasons for you to consider making a new will. We recommend that you should review your will every 3 to 5 years and after any major change in your circumstances.

Purchasing a property is one of the most important and costly purchases a person will make during the lifetime so it is important to ensure that your will provides details on who you would like this to pass to following your death. You can make a specific gift of your property in your estate, or it can form part of your residuary estate to pass to one or more beneficiaries.

Divorce does not revoke a will. Your current will will remain valid but for inheritance purposes, your ex-spouse is treated as if they had died when the marriage or civil partnership was dissolved. This means that your ex-spouse would no longer be able to inherit from your estate.

It is likely that your personal circumstances and assets will have changed by virtue of going through a divorce. You should therefore consider updating your will to ensure that it still accurately reflects your wishes.

If your will left everything to your spouse and had not made provision for any further beneficiaries, then your estate would be dealt with as if you had died without a will. In these circumstances, the law would decide who would inherit from your estate under the ‘Intestacy Rules’. The Intestacy Rules do not recognise stepchildren and cohabiting partners as eligible beneficiaries.

There is there a risk that your estate could end up not being distributed in the way that you would have intended. Updating your will would avoid these potential issues.

Should you wish to instruct a solicitor at Poole Alcock to make your will, you can contact our on-boarding team on to arrange a face-to-face appointment with a solicitor in our team. We are also happy to facilitate will appointments via video call on Microsoft Teams if this is more suited to our clients’ circumstances.

Our on-boarding team will schedule an appointment with an experienced solicitor in our Wills and Probate Team. You will then receive our client care paperwork in advance of the appointment to read through before your initial meeting.

During the appointment, we will discuss your personal circumstances to be able to provide you with the best possible advice for your will.  We also include advice on inheritance tax within our fixed fee for wills.

We would assess the potential inheritance tax liability in your estate based on the value of your current assets.  It should be noted that as your assets and circumstances change over time, it is important to review your will to ensure that it still reflects your wishes and any further estate planning considerations are made.

After the appointment, a draft of your will is prepared and sent to you for your approval before a further appointment is arranged for the signing of your will. We would then arrange for your signed will to be kept in our secure will store and the will would be registered with the National Will Register.

If you have not made a will before, or are considering updating your existing will, you should consider consulting a solicitor to help you draft a will. It is important that a will is drafted carefully to ensure that it aligns with your wishes and legal requirements.

If a will has not been drafted in line with legal requirements, this can lead to the will being declared invalid. This can become problematic for your loved ones. It can also mean that your wishes aren’t followed and may cause delays in the estate administration process.

At Poole Alcock our professional charges for the preparation of a Single Will is £350 plus VAT and then £500 plus VAT for Mirror Wills. We have a team of experienced Wills and Probate Solicitors who would love to speak with you about making a will.

It is important to make a will as it allows you to have control over what happens to your assets when you die. This is often a main concern for people when writing a will as they want to make sure that their money, property and possessions will pass to the people that they want to inherit them.

Making a will often makes the estate administration process more straightforward. If you die without making a will, the ‘Intestacy Rules’ will decide how your assets will be distributed. This can cause upset and often lead to a person’s wishes not being followed.

If you have dependents under the age of 18, making a will provides you with an opportunity to appoint legal guardian(s) for the children. The guardian would have legal rights over the children and look after them should you die before they turn 18. It also allows you to specify the age that your children will receive any inheritance if they are still minors at the time the will is written.

While it can be uncomfortable to think about making a will for some people, it is a responsible and caring act which provides peace of mind for you and your loved ones to know what your final wishes are.