Making a will is the only way to ensure that your wishes in relation to your property and personal and financial affairs are carried out after your death.

It is also a great opportunity for personal tax planning and can ensure that valuable inheritance tax reliefs are available to your executors. It can also include trust structures that can be tailored to your intended beneficiaries’ particular needs, for example, if you have young children, vulnerable family members or you wish to benefit charitable causes long into the future.

Making a will also give you the freedom to appoint your executors, who will administer your estate and look after things for you when you’re no longer around. These could be family members, friends or professionals. Your executors have authority to deal with your estate immediately on your death, including making arrangements for your funeral.

If you have children under 18, you can also appoint guardians to look after them if you die and include this information as part of your will.

Having a will in place will give you and your family the peace of mind and certainty that your wishes will be followed on your death.

Initially, we will meet with you to discuss your financial and family position, as well as your wishes in respect of your estate. In the current climate with coronavirus, this meeting will be held via video conferencing or telephone.

Once you have decided how you would like your will to be structured, we will prepare draft documents and send them out to you to review, together with a summary of the matters discussed at the meeting and the advice given. We will answer any queries you may have and make any necessary amendments to the documents, before preparing the final will for your signature.

According to your preference, the final will can either be sent out to you with instructions for how to sign it to make it legally binding, or we can meet with you again to arrange for this to be signed with us. When the final will has been signed, we will store your will safely for you free of charge and provide you with a copy for your records.

Wills are personal documents and we, therefore, tailor them to fit your circumstances; when we know what the right will for you is, we can provide an accurate cost estimate.

Our costs for preparing a standard bespoke lawyer written will start at £550. 

Take a look at our will writing prices

If you are looking to do an online will we have put together a guide on the considerations you should think about before going ahead – find out more here

Putting a will in place with us can be surprisingly quick and could be prepared in a matter of days. For example, should you need to make a will for health reasons, or because you are going abroad on holiday and want to put your affairs in order quickly, we will work with you to ensure your will is prepared before you leave.

Generally, we will produce a draft will for you within a week of our initial meeting, and once your draft will is approved, we will aim for you to sign it as soon as possible.

Without a will, you die intestate and your estate will be distributed in accordance with the rules of intestacy. The rules determine how your assets will be divided between your spouse/civil partner (if you have one), or other blood relatives in a strict priority order. These may not be the people you would want to inherit assets, particularly if you have difficult family relationships or are estranged from certain members of your family.

If you and your partner are not married or in a civil partnership, they will not benefit from your estate, even though you currently live together. Similarly, step-children and foster children cannot inherit under the rules of intestacy. If you have separated from a partner, but have not finalised a divorce or dissolution, then your spouse/civil partner will still stand to inherit, despite your separation. If you’re currently going through a divorce or separation then we can help and advice you on how to amend or draft your will to reflect these changes.

Dying without a will can often make the estate administration process more difficult, and lengthy, particularly if the family tree and line of succession is unclear and the whereabouts of certain family members is unknown. Your estate may also be liable to pay more inheritance tax than it might otherwise have needed to.

An administrator is a person(s) appointed by the court to deal with the deceased’s estate if they died without making a will.

Generally the property owned by the person who died. For example, a house, household goods, savings, investments, a car, etc.

A bequest is a gift of personal property made by a will other than land, such as an item of jewellery or a car.

The grant of probate is an important legal document that allows the person in charge (called the executor) to carry out the wishes of someone who has passed away. It confirms that the will is valid and gives the executor the power to gather the person’s belongings, settle any debts or taxes they owe, and distribute what’s left to the people mentioned in the will. This ensures that everything is done just as the deceased person wanted.

Probate is the process of obtaining the court’s permission to carry out the wishes within someone’s will, usually carried out by an executor. There are usually five steps involved in the process of probate:

1. Registering the death – This needs to be done via a registry office within five days on the death (the process will be faster if you use the registry office in the area where the person died). Once you have done this you will receive the ‘death certificate’.

2. Value the estate – The estate will need to be valued in order to understand the assets of the deceased, and to determine if any inheritance tax is due. List and value possessions and assets of the deceased, including any joint assets, as well as any gifts that may have been made within seven years of their death.

3. Pay any inheritance tax due – Inheritance tax needs to be paid on estates valued at over £325,000 using an IHT400 form. Even if the value of the estate is below the threshold, you will still need to complete an inheritance tax form (IHT205 tax form) confirming this.

4. File the probate application – This can be done either online or using paper forms. More information of the forms that needs completing, along with guidance for each method, can be found on the gov.uk website.

5. Pay any probate fees – If the value of the estate is over £5,000 then the application fee is £273. There’s no probate fee if the estate is £5,000 or less.

Once the grant of probate has been received, you can then begin the process of settling the deceased’s estate.

You may not need to apply for probate if there is a will, however, you will usually need probate to deal with an estate that includes property. As a named executor in a decreased person’s will, applying for probate will give you the authority to distribute the estate (including any property) according to the instructions in that will.

As the grant of probate provides the executor(s) with the authority to proceed with distributing the assets within an estate (including any property), then, a sale of a house cannot be completed before the grant of probate is obtained

As each individual case is different (with varying factors and levels of complexities), there is no ‘set amount’ that a solicitor will charge for probate. However, the fee is usually calculated as a % of the value of the estate. Get in touch with a member of our probate team for an estimate of how much probate costs may be.