Own Hand written Will in plain English

We paid £350 recently to update our will through a local solicitor.
My husband wanted me to update our previous will written by a will writing company. I read through our previous will, there were errors and there were no signatures on the will at all so I vetoed his suggestion.
Our will is a simple one, we have only one daughter.

No signatures? The will was invalid.

i disagree.
GSM is simply giving us the benefit of her professional knowledge and real life experience.
lucky for us, i say.

my last was in response to MollyMinx1 comment.

Thanks welbeck. I appreciate that. I hope I am reasonably ‘knowledgeable’ rather than ‘opinionated’.

If your affairs are very simple I don’t see what’s wrong with that. I have seen a very short, handwritten will, in very wobbly writing, written by someone seriously ill and nearing the end, that was perfectly valid.

However you need to think of e.g., unlikely though it may seem, what if your son should predecease you? Who does it all go to in that case?

A childless aunt of mine left her assets to be divided between 11 nieces and nephews, but presumably the sol. advised her to specify in addition that if any of them should predecease her, their share should go to their children whether natural or adopted, legitimate or illegitimate, both of which could have applied in her case, and which she might not have thought to add if she’d written it herself.

what do you define a reasonable £400 for a piece of paper.

my father was housebound and solicitor charged him £150 for a 6 miles journey on top of the Will and it was printed on a cheap piece of A4. Not what I would have expected from a professional firm.

It’s not just a piece of paper. You are paying for the knowledge and expertise which crafted the words on the page and the overheads the solicitor has, which I assure you are hefty. On top of all usual office and staff costs, annual practising certificates and insurance are expensive. Don’t for one moment think the solicitor trousers the £400 (I trust you didn’t include the 20% vat in that).

Was this recently molly? £150 for a home visit seems reasonable to me.

Time spent Molly. You wouldn’t have got many minutes of my time for that. And legal documents, even for multi million pound transactions, have long been printed off on ordinary paper - the days of something written or typed on parchment are long gone.

I will bear that in mind thank you Callistemon21. Just wish old people had legal aid to help them not being ripped off. They have little enough money. Should solicitors have discounts for over 65's?

Ripped off? I think you mean charged a proper fee for the job done and time spent.

Solicitors aren’t like hairdressers and pub owners who might give a discount to OAPs. As with everything, you get what you pay for (though sadly not on parchment now).

MollyMinx1

what do you define a reasonable £400 for a piece of paper.

I wish my husband’s cousins have paid £400 and write a will. They lived together, never married and have no children.

The poor executor who is elderly himself spent 2 years tracing all the first cousins all over the world who have never heard of these cousins and had to go through bags and bags of paperwork trying to locate their bank accounts, shares, pensions etc., Absolute nightmare for the executor.

For that reason, I have listed all our assets on a lovely A4 paper including all the apps, passwords, telephone numbers for my daughter should anything happened to either one of us.

That sort of organisation makes things so much easier at a difficult time. Well done Spore. The experience of your husband’s cousins illustrates so well why using a solicitor to administer an estate can be very expensive - but it keeps your hair intact.

MollyMinx If you went out fr a meal would you expect the restaurant to only charge you for the cost of the food, as if bought in the local supermarket, or do you understand that the price includes the cost of the staff, the premises, maintenance and repair fuel bills etc etc.

Well, it is no different with any other professions, including solicitors, accountants, doctors, vets etc etc.

When you consult them their charges include the cost of providing their expertise, ongoing training, premises, equipment, obeying legal requirements etc etc.

To use a well known Yorkshire phrase, you will get 'owt for nowt'. You could use a will writing service, that will be cheaper. and, as you say, do it yourself and it will also be almost cost free, but essentially you get what you pay for. Use a solicitor and you will have a fully legal and properly drawn up will, where the solicitor, who specialises in this kind of work will ask all the questions relating to all the possible problems that you hadn't thought of. Not only that, if by chance the solicitor did make a mistake, and, of course,on occasion this will happen, then that solicitor has the professional liability insurance that your executors can claim against, so that no one loses by their mistake.

Do it yourself and you are reliant on you thinking through every possible thing that could happen,. For example, before this thread, had you considered the possibility of what would happen if your son, or even the executors died before you did and when you may no longer be able to make decisions on your own behalf?

You need to know the right legal language to use to ensure that your intentions are clearly and legally expressed with absolutely no danger of misinterpretation, and of course, if you mess it up, your whole estate could be substantially reduced by the cost of legal proceedings to sort it all out.

What happens to my estate after I die is very important to me, so important that I am not taking any risks of having a badly drawn up or illegal will, leading to expensive legal proceedings or the distribution of assets other than as I wished. My will, which I review regularl,y has been drawn up by a solicitor specialising in such legal documents.

It is worth paying several hundreds of pounds for the peace of mind and security that gives me. It is a lot less than the cost of a weeks holiday.

MollyMinx1

Germanshepherdmum quite opinionated aren't you, a solicitor by any chance?

I would never describe Germanshepherdsmum as quite opinionated. She has on numerous occasions, kindly given freely of her time to assist posters who come to Gransnet for advice.

Good post MOnica, and thank you for your kind words Aldom, both posts much appreciated.

Message deleted by Gransnet. Here's a link to our Talk guidelines.

I beg your pardon? Early morning to night time? And I am not on any forum other than GN. What an unpleasant post.

MollyMinx1 GSM is a solicitor, haven't you realised this yet?

You clearly do not understand how GN works. It is a forum of older people from all walks of life who have worked, or stillwork, in a wide variety of professions. We all have very different opinions on many subjects and are all prepared to state our opinions, morning, noon and night (perhaps you are fortunate enough to have no experience of imsomnia).

I think there are many of us who are more than willing to stand beside *GSM and say 'We too are opinionated.'

I am not sure whether you are new to GN or just that we have never been on the same threads before, but lots of us have no fear about expressing our, often opposing, views quite forcefully, but generally, courteously. Personal criticism is not considered acceptable. You might bear that in mind.

Please be aware that I didn’t report the deleted post, though I was sorely tempted.

I missed the post that was deleted. As MOnica says *there are many of us who are more than willing to stand beside GSM and saw ‘we too are opinionated’

@MollyMinx to hold an opinion backed by years of professional experience is not the same as being opinionated.

If I have a health issue, I would prefer the opinion of a health professional to that of an unqualified and inexperienced layperson and the same applies to a legal issue.

Thank you very much MOnica, Iam and Maw. I’m grateful for your support. I know some people consider that solicitors are rip off merchants. Thankfully I didn’t work for people like that. Though big corporate clients - the mainstay of my practice -drove a hard bargain they always showed respect. At the end of the day, respect for what you’ve done is what keeps you going. When I qualified the President of the Law Society told my batch of newly qualifieds that we must always use our knowledge to help people - I have never forgotten his words, decades ago, and try to follow that injunction.