tenminutewill.co.uk

Tiggs_2

nigel_clements wrote:

I will ask my FA what he thinks of https://www.tenminute will.co.uk and see how he justifies his charges.
Nigel

good idea, beyond the cost of the will (£100 if he passes it off) you are just paying for his time....even if he's charging £200 per hour you are still getting 8/9 hrs of his time for that price.........thats a big hourly rate and a VERY long time needed to do a will!

Hillfly

fyi
A quick bit of web research and I note that the compnay behind tenminutewill also runs this web site:

http://www.willbequest.co.uk

Dingbat23

It certainly does seem cheap - in particular when you want to set up a discretionary trust will BUT as with many things, you get what you pay for. When one of you dies the trust then has to be activated and administered, which has another cost (usually a percentage of the estate, if you use a lawyer). You could do it yourself, with a number of named trustees, but if it is not run absolutely correctly it can fail, and the government will still take the IHT you are trying to avoid paying. Most people will therefore end up using a lawyer, but they can charge up to 7% of your estate to do this.
Organisations that charge more now to set up the trust may do so because they limit the cost at the time of administering the trust. You might be able to save a grand or so now, but will that mean that your children lose 20 grand of your estate when you die because of legal fees?
If you can get it in writing exactly what the costs will be to execute the will and the trust when you die then great - but a lot of companies will skip over that part - your hardly going to complain about about it when you're dead!
Some lawyers will offer to set up a will for FREE - Why? - because they write themselves in as an executor and charge 10% of your estate... worth thinking about.

One more thing about this particular site - it is valid for England and Wales. If you live is Scotland, like me, the will may not actually be valid at all. It says in the site that it will 'probably' be OK - but that does not sound quite good enough for me.

Errata

It says in the site that it will 'probably' be OK - but that does not sound quite good enough for me

That phrase would have me running very fast, in the opposite direction.
If you have an estate c£400k, isn't it worth having a solictor draw up your will? Sensible people moneysave, which is what this site is all about, but sometimes cheapest can be far from best.

margaretclare

The first thing to be aware of is that your property should be held as tenants-in-common rather than as joint tenants.

The other thing to think about is to ensure that as much of your assets as possible are held individually rather than jointly.

This is before you even get to the stage of doing complicated will planning - these are the basics.

Margaret

Dr_Dr

I have read all the comments with interest. I have spent the last few months trying to decide where to get my will done. I have looked at tenminutewill.co.uk and was very impressed, especially with the documentation describing the various types of trust, and how they work. This is far better than I have seen elsewhere. I have contacted a number of Will Writers and solicitors, nobody is as cheap or as convincing. As has been said, it is only a piece of paper after all, I am sure they all download bits of Word Documents, insert some names and cobble them together. Like most people, I only want a simple will, to ensure my children get my meager assets, I don't own a country estate. One solicitor I saw was honest enough to say that they charge so much because the savings are so substantial.

So far nobody has mentioned the two main points

1. Will the will do what you want?
2. Is it legally watertight?

If the answer is Yes to both, then I can see no reason for not using them.

Each individual can answer question 1 for themselves. There must be someone out there that has some legal knowledge that could answer question 2. Certainly tenminutewill.co.uk thinks they are.

Which raises another point - our current PM has brought us into the age of retrospective taxes, he has already changed the rules on Trusts. Your £2000 will can be rendered just as useless as a £100 one.

It is unfortunate that we have to go to such lengths to try and protect our individual HIT allowance, which is rightfully ours.

Now_then

nigel_clements wrote: »

The website: www.tenminutewill.co.uk will apparently do the same thing for less than £100. It seems perfectly legit

Nigel.

There are Charities who have qualified tax lawyers, who volunter their time, that can write your will for nothing so long as you leave something (your choice of the amount) to the charity.

That could be worth looking into.

Errata

Round about this time of year solicitors will draw up a will if you donate to one of the nominated charities specified. Sorry, can't remember what the scheme's called but it's usually advertised.