How often should I review my Will?
John and Sylvia had assets worth a little over £1m.
They set up special Wills to save Inheritance Tax in 2016, but hadn’t reviewed it since (we recommend a quick review at least every 3 years, and if you might have a taxable estate, every time anything changes.
John and Sylvia welcomed the Main Residence Nil Rate Band as a boost to their IHT planning when it arrived on 6th April 2017 but didn’t seek any advice on its impact on their planning.
When they died in a car crash last year, the Taxman was too polite to send a letter thanking them for the additional £140,000 in Inheritance Tax their children had to pay when the old planning and the new Main Residence Nil Rate Band cancelled each other out.
Moral: regular reviews – tax changes, values change, relationship change, needs both change and differ, relationships suffer.
Second Marriage Issues
Blended families usually have very poor legal plans in case, if any.
How do you balance the competing needs of the children of the first marriage/ relationship with those of the new partner, his or her children and any children of the new marriage?
If either partner dies, parental responsibility will automatically go to any living parent listed on the birth certificate. If not, then it goes (in effect) to Social Services.
Up to date Wills can at least appoint a Guardian or Guardians of the parents choice, though of course the birth parent will have rights.
A new Will can protect the lifetime security of the partners, whilst ensuring that the family of the first to die totally lose out, which is usually the case.
It is all about the conversation, which is not always easy. But it is vital.
All legal planning is about the conversation.
Avoid advisers who do no more than just ask you what you want to do, they are essentially asking you to advise yourself. If they try to sell you expensive lifetime Trusts to avoid Care Fees – run for the hills!
The whole point is to have those difficult discussions, and come up with a solution which is as close as you can get to ensuring that you and your beneficiaries are well looked after.
Who do you trust?
Not everyone is lucky enough to have children they can totally rely on to do the right thing, and Lasting Powers of Attorney – especially the finance one – do give opportunities for illegal exploitation. I can advise on ways to cover as many bases as possible to ensure you and the beneficiaries are protected, hopefully without having to appoint professionals as Trustees, which is never cheap, but sometimes the only answer.
The same applies to Wills, where the family may not be the right folk to deal with the initial process of obtaining a Grant of Probate correctly. In some cases, family executors either fail to understand Wills or just get greedy and take far more than their legal share – quite often under instruction from a partner!
There are also cases where the beneficiaries are too young or just not reliable enough to manage their own money—drugs can destroy anyone—and this is a case where Trusts created in the Will can be managed by the right people to look after the beneficiaries. For example, the Trust could buy a home for them, which they would not be able to remortgage to get money for anything the attorneys felt was unsuitable. However, the trustees could buy things that were appropriate for them.
Dad had to go into a Nursing Home, and the bank wouldn’t give Mum any cash to buy food with – what can I do?
When one partner in a joint bank account does not have the ability to manage the account anymore—even if temporarily—the bank is within its rights to freeze the account, as both partners need to know and understand the account. If one does not, then the bank could be liable for any fraud. In this case, the issue was that the bad knees meant he fell over a lot, and the partner could not pick him up. Normally, he would have gone into a Care Home, but a hoist was needed to lift him up, so it had to be a Nursing Home.
In this case, the word “nursing” implied that there might be an issue with “mental capacity” so the bank wanted confirmation that the person in the nursing home was still capable of understanding what was going on in the account. They refused to visit the client, and they refused to accept a general power of attorney, so it took 3 months before any housekeeping was available, during which time friends and family had to help out. Currently, it would probably take even longer with massive delays at the Office of the Public Guardian.
Moral: contact me to get Lasting Powers of Attorney sorted if you are over 18. Accidents and illnesses can happen to anyone at any time, and if you are over 18 then the Court of Protection are your legal emergency parents, not your own parents or your wife and definitely not your common law spouse.
From a fellow Society of Will Writers Member:
Another heartbreaking call.
“Dad’s ill with cancer and we were given your name by a good friend quite a while ago as she’d told us he should get a Will and Power of Attorney done. But we’ve not been able to broach it with him as it felt too sensitive”
Now he has taken a rapid turn for the worse, is seriously poorly and has been sent home from hospital for his last few weeks / possibly months. And he is too ill to make these documents.
Life insurance was in place which might make early payment to make his short time comfortable with private care. But won’t pay out as he can’t complete the forms and they don’t have POA.
Bills to pay and the family don’t have access to his account. Car insurance needs to be renewed soon as the daughter is on it, but they can’t do it for him.
“What can we do?”
To tell them there is nothing I can do now, but that all these things can be done when he dies is awful.
Sometimes we have to have the most difficult conversations. But if you don’t do it with those you love, and get these most important documents in place, then the consequences can be awful.
Moral: Just talk to those you love. Tell them that doing this is the kindest thing they can do for you … and make it easy.
