Flowchart Will

no1catman

I wonder, would it be acceptable to have a will laid out via a flowchart?
A Flowchart is a way of following logical decisions (y/n) - which take the form of diamond shapes, with 'process' squares in between.

To me it should be an easy to follow graphic, with less chance of misinterpretation - as long as the text in the process box is clear enough.

Any comments.

Malthusian

My first thought is that if you want to include a flowchart in your Will then it must be pretty complicated. (If your Will was "to my wife on the first death and thereafter to our children in equal shares" you could draw a flowchart but it would be a total waste of space, as the prose does the job perfectly clearly.) And if the Will is complicated then the instructions need to be absolutely unambiguous, which is why you pay solicitors to draw them up. A flowchart may not be sufficiently unambiguous, for example in detailing what happens if one of your beneficiaries has pre-deceased you.

But it's possible I am just being prejudiced against a new idea. I don't have any intention of making a complicated Will so I find it difficult to envisage why a flowchart would be necessary.

no1catman

To me -'leave my estate to X' followed by Did X pre-decease Y/N? - seems simpler!
Though the only complication, which I think is made easier via a flowchart, is a potential inheritance would increase the estate by maybe fifteen times. This in turn, would change the value of a couple of gifts!

SevenOfNine

Is this going to be a DiY Will?

Yorkshireman99

No, no and no again! This sounds like an attempt at a DIY will which is bad enough in conventional form. Go to a solicitor, not a will writer, and get it done properly. The solicitor will not only discuss possibilities you probably have not even considered as well as those you have.

jackyann

Agreed that if it is complicated then it needs to go to a solicitor.

I see 2 uses of a flowchart:
1. to show the solicitor how you wish to dispose of your assets
2. as a simple explanation for people such as beneficiaries, executors, family members - as long as they understand that it is not the legal document.

getmore4less

The problem is the legalese needed for certain things to happen and with out some of the defaults kick in.

why not post your flow chart and see what problems people find

Malthusian

no1catman wrote: »

To me -'leave my estate to X' followed by Did X pre-decease Y/N? - seems simpler!

Not really. My version has one sentence of prose. Your version has three flowchart boxes, each with a sentence inside, with arrows in between them. Entia non sunt multiplicanda.

Linton

The legal profession has spent the last 400 years or more working out how best to express ones wishes accurately and completely with minimal opportunity for misunderstanding or disagreement. It seems a pity to waste this effort and start again from scratch, rediscovering all the possible pitfalls on the way.

Malthusian

no1catman wrote: »

Though the only complication, which I think is made easier via a flowchart, is a potential inheritance would increase the estate by maybe fifteen times. This in turn, would change the value of a couple of gifts!

Why not make those gifts a percentage?

I think we now have a clear example of where a flowchart Will is likely to be a bad idea. So the idea is that if you die leaving £100,000, you'll leave £10,000 to your brother and sister and the rest to your wife, but if you die after your Aunt Ethel leaves you £1.4m, you'll leave £100,000 to your brother and sister and the rest to your wife.

The problem is that if Aunt Ethel leaves you her £1.4m next year and in the decades that follow you develop a taste for fast cars, or you suffer from early onset dementia and you spend many years in one of the better care homes, or something else that means at the time of your death most of Aunt Ethel's money is gone, your siblings could get the lion's share of your estate.

If it's something completely different then I'm happy to be corrected. The problem is not with having a flowchart but with changing the size of bequests conditional on one particular event that changes the value of the estate, ignoring the fact that any number of other events could dramatically alter the size of the estate in between the Will being made and executed.

Silvertabby

When we made our Wills or solicitor told us that under no circumstances should we leave a % to named charities. If we did that, the charities could drag things out for months by refusing to authorised the sale of the house in case a better offer (and therefore a higher % cut for them) came along.