At Inheritance Legal Services we pride ourselves on offering free advice with a bespoke service built around you and your needs. We are NOT a team of pushy sales people.

With this in mind, we wanted to write a piece which could save families future inheritance and may even save you money full stop!

If you have made the decision that you need a Will, then the chances are you fall into one of two categories- you either feel you HAVE to make a Will (because society says everyone should have a Will when you get older) or you want to use it to protect your possessions and your family in the future.

Quite simply, if you have acquired assets like cash, pensions, car and especially a home, why would you attempt to create a Will yourself not fully knowing that it is written, signed and contains the important information, correctly? You have spent a life time working hard for your money and home, why risk it all for the sake of just getting some professional help- especially when it doesn’t need to be expensive? I appreciate lots of people are put off by the mine field of “where to begin?” “Which solicitor do I use?” “How much is this going to cost me?” but if you go to the right place, it can be very simple and professional.

BEWARE When choosing who to write your Will- do not just go for the ‘cheapest’ quote provider as these companies will often add additional costs when they meet with you OR worse, they may not even be fully qualified, covered or have the correct knowledge to write your Will, making it no different to Writing a Will yourself at home.

–          Ensure your Will writer is giving you advice, not just taking your money

–          Ensure they have qualifications, insurance and can provide testimonials from satisfied customers

–          Ensure they are offering fixed fees, not charging for an appointment and giving all costs up front before carrying out any work

–          Finally, ensure that you do your research on that company to confirm they are who they say they are.

Inheritance Legal services are an Estate Planning business approved by both Cambridgeshire Trading Standards under their ‘Buy with confidence’ scheme as well as Norfolk Trading Standards ‘Trusted Trader’ scheme. We work on low cost, fixed fees and offer FREE bespoke appointments in your home or at one of our shop fronted offices weekdays until 8pm and Saturday mornings. We work with the society of Will Writers to ensure our practices, information and ways of working are at the forefront of the industry.

We deal with Wills, Powers of Attorney, Trusts and Funeral Plans every day and are fully kept up to date with the latest laws and legislation making us experts in this field at a very reasonable price.

Writing a Will really does not need to be a confusing or stressful experience, providing you get the correct help.

Things to remember:

• ANYONE can contest a Will- whether it is produced professionally or by yourself
• A valid Will must be signed, dated, witnessed (by two people).
• If there is no Will found when you die, then it simply does not exist and estate will follow the ‘line of intestacy’
• It is the latest Will to be signed correctly and dated that will be used to administer the estate
• NEVER attach anything to a Will- if there is a mark where even a paper clip has been attached to the Will, it makes it easily contestable as it could be seen to contain a Codicil stating changes to that Will
• A will can become invalid if it has marks/drawing on or is damaged
• If you are leaving a specific person OUT of your Will, you MUST write details of this in your Will- rather than just not mention them (we actually get clients to supply a letter explaining their reasons for leaving someone out as well as writing the details into the will)
• There are further complications need to be taking into consideration, which a simple Will does NOT cover, things like if for example you didn’t want your daughter’s husband claiming your estate (after you have died) as part of a divorce settlement- you would need professional help from a company like ours if you had concerns about this.

After looking at the list above, you can hopefully understand why getting the correct advice and information is vital when making your Will.

Finally let me leave you with this short true story to show how easy it is to leave a problem with a homemade Will…

A gentleman once left a homemade Will saying, quite simply ‘I leave all to Mother’- (putting aside from the fact it was signed and witnessed properly) this caused a problem. Why? Because ‘Mother’ was the nickname the whole family affectionately referred to his Wife … and his actual mother was still alive. Who was he leaving it to? Problem caused.

You can call Inheritance Legal Service anytime during working hours to get fixed prices and information- our freephone number is 0800 170 0475