Have you made a will ?

Re house being sold to a landlord vs. young owner occupiers, made me think of a dd's recent house purchase. It was a probate sale, and priced somewhat lower than similar in the area. Since it was easily the nicest she'd seen, dd offered slightly over the asking price, never thinking she'd get it.

But she did, and the EA later told her that a LL had offered a bit more, more, but the former owner's daughter wanted a first time buyer to have what had been a happy family home.
She left a lovely card for dd, too.
It was so nice and heart-warming, esp. . in what so often feels like a money-grabbing era, though being realistic, I don't suppose the world has ever been much different.

My parents actually sold their rather large house to a housing association so it could be made into bedsits for youngsters coming out of care. Their neighbour did the same.
They then went into flats run by the housing association, and paid them rent, so the housing association got all its money back in the end, but my parents could not have continued in that house, and neither could their neighbour.
My parents never made a will, but they died within three months of each other, leaving roughly two thousand, which the bank just shared out between the four of us.
The government must only be involved if there is enough money to incur inheritance tax, and there is no next of kin.
I know when my father died, first, we had to go to the bank and sign forms for all his money to be given to my mother.

gilly altruism is still alive your post made me smile and feel good.

I have just received a leaflet from Cancer Research about free wills month.
The website is
www.cruc.org/freewillservice

It is not legally possible to control someone after you die so you cannot insist on being buried or cremated or that your beneficiaries do things you want.

I echo what others have said that you need to make a new will if you remarry as the old one is no longer valid. Periodically I remind DH of this and also DSs so they can make sure their father makes a new will when someone sees what a great catch he is!

Our DS made a simple will leaving everything to his brother. We are so glad he did because he was recently found dead and his estranged wife is under the misapprehension that he left a huge sum. She says she is next of kin and thinks that means she is entitled to everything but didn't claim next of kin when the funeral had to be arranged and paid for nor has she offered to dispose of his flat or pay any of his bills!

Luckylegs 9 - yes my brother is fully and legally adopted. So he will get the money by intestacy if he survives me - he may well not. We can never tell.

However, something drew me up very short today at work concerning leaving legacies as some suggest here.

I was listening to a conversation in the staff rest area where it was being said that someone who had once been an employee had left a legacy to the firm . There was some excitement and then it was said that her legacy was only around £20K some were then laughing at this amount as being not worth the bother.

Now I do not know about the deceased but she may well have not been wealthy but the attitude of some staff was discouraging to say the least. If people feel that small legacies are not welcome then I am sure the government would be just as grateful - and you wouldnt be laughed at either I doubt.

Sad that when someone thinks of you so little of you when you have thought of them.

Oops sorry maryeliza54 and Marieeliz got you two a bit mixed up .

Yes he has mellowed so much now he is older annsixty and probably since my mum became ill. He and I were almost enemies when I was young though .

Much as I'd like to take the credit for that, it was my similar namesake I think

No huge profit for them then.
That is actually very sad gilly your dad sounds a lovely man.

I should have made it clear that my parents sold their home for just less than £65,000 almost every penny now gone on rent to the LA ( which is £120 per week) . My mum has since died and my dad still says they did the right thing .

What a very noble thought gilly.
I admire your parents for their generosity.
Sadly not many would be able to do that as they will need to buy something else or need the profit to eke out pensions when downsizing in retiremen
I am so pleased the young couple appreciated what was done for them.

Just reading back through some of these posts and noticed maryeliza54 saying she did not want her house to be sold to a landlord but to a young couple etc.

My mum and dad did exactly this. They moved from their ex council home (3 bedroom etc) to a specially adapted rented bungalow when my mum was very ill and in a wheelchair.
Her express wishes were that no matter what, her house could not be sold to a landlord (buy to let) and if it had not sold before her death it was something that she was going to put into a will. My parents turned down 2 much better offers before selling to a young couple with a small child for as much as the mortgage they could raise (a lot less than they could have got). The couple visited my mum after they moved in and brought post themselves etc. they were so grateful and my mum and dad knew that they had made the right decision. I pass regularly when I take my 2 youngest DGC to school and they still live there and seem to have done quite a bit of improvement work. It makes me happy to think my mum would be smiling down.

Abbey, I understand where you are coming from but is it for definite your half brother would inherit? Was he legally adopted and thereby legally next in line? For the reason you state I won't leave my d out although it is her that has left me behind but I never stopped loving her.
To all those with our families or friends, know that as you get older those you love die and you can be left aloneafter a very full life, which is so sad. I would want a charity to benefit rather than the treasury, or perhaps buy expensive equipment needed at a hospital, or if you've loads, an extra room at a hospice. So much good could be done.

How sad you feel you have nothing to want to leave to someone specual no family and no friends Abby

My mother, an intelligent woman, wrote her will but made a simple error and her will was invalid. The error? She didn't sign directly under the instructions but left a gap of about 2".

Marieeliz, I know someone who recently left his house to charity. In order to avoid the hassle of what you describe, the solicitor advised that the executors should not be responsible for selling it and passing the cash on. He said it can result in a lot of pushing and harrying and querying whether it was marketed for the right price, etc.

Instead, after a maximum period (plenty of time in this case for clearing, etc.) the keys were to be passed to the charity and it would then be up to them to have all the hassle of selling it.
Sounded v sensible to me.

We have. It's equal to all our children, grandchildren and greatgrandchildren. Equal shares of what we hope is nothing left, after we spend it on our way out.

Only marriage affects a Will's validity

It's a good idea to check if your will remains valid. Not sure how true it is, but I was told wills don't change upon divorce but they do upon remarriage. So if one or both parties divorced then remarries it would be best to make sure your wishes will be upheld as you may not want your estate to go to a former partner or to a present partner. It's something I keep waning to do but have never got around to. Also worth checking through your papers for forgotten investments. I've just found some relating to investments I made in my early 20's. Might be worth something afte 30 years if I'm lucky ??

My DS is a Solicitor specialising in Wills and Probate, so the answer would be "Yes, we've made Wills"!
You don't need to have your Will done by a Solicitor, but it's a good idea if there's anything at all unusual in it.
One case that sticks in my mind was DS acting for a lady in her late nineties who had never made a Will. She had no children and wanted her entire estate to go to various charities.
She was admitted to hospital after a bad fall, and the first person she wanted notified was DS, so that she could get her Will sorted out. He worked through the night at her hospital bedside as she was so insistent that she wanted it done, signed and witnessed, "just in case". It was completed at just after 5-00 a.m. Signed, and witnessed by two nursing staff before 5-15. DS was driving home when he received a phone call from the hospital informing him that the lady in question had just died, at 6-30a.m.
If she hadn't insisted on him working through that night, 4 national charities would have lost out on their share of over 5 million quid!
It would have been a sin to give all that money to the Treasury, so thank goodness she was a determined old lady,

Very interested to read all of these. Here, in mainland Europe (Germany, etc.), no-one makes wills. The law is quite definite about inheritance. When a person dies, half his estate goes to the spouse and the other half is inherited in equal parts by spouse and children. Although you can disinherit a spouse or child, it is very difficult and almost no-one bothers. Although I am a great fan of the British legal system, this seems so much easier. When my father died 7 years ago, my brother and I just signed a statement that everything was to go to my mother. When she died earlier this year, we split everything down the middle. No hassle, no arguments.

A will does not need a solicitor to be valid. The forms you can buy in Smiths are excellent if your affairs are straightforward and you follow the instructions

My BIL told me off for paying a solicitor to do our wills, said he and his partner had written their own and they were in a drawer in their house. I was told a while ago that wills aren`t completely legal and binding unless done with a solicitor. Was I told wrong?

Leaving money to charities worries me. You hear stories of them rushing to get sale of property, at any price, and trying to hustle things through.

We had an interesting experience with Heir Hunters. A friend of the family left everything in his will to us. He died at a time when we were in the middle of our own tragedy so we didn't realise for quite a while when I noticed his house was up for sale. I rang the estate agents to see if he had gone into a home but they told me that he had died intestate so Heir Hunters had found distant family who he had been estranged from. I knew he'd made a will so I rang the local solicitor and sure enough, it was there. It turned out that the Official Solicitor had looked through the paperwork at the house, gone to the house next door where the neighbours had only just arrived in the area and had decided there was no will so Heir Hunters had taken it over. The Official Solicitor charged a small fortune for this shoddy service. The distant family reckon they paid a house clearance company to clear the house of its very valuable contents. They had also emptied the bank accounts. When we informed them of our and the will's existence, one of them threatened to sue us for his wasted time. It was a complete mess. The moral of this lengthy story is to ensure you let somebody know where the will is or keep a copy in the house!