Wills Advice Please: Scotland

lemon26

Good evening all, hope you're well.


I'm after advice regarding making a will please. I'm 34, own my house outright and have two pensions - my current one I'm paying in to and a MOD preserved pension payable at 65. I live with my partner, although we aren't married yet but otherwise have no dependents etc.


What I'd like to do is write a will that leaves my partner with everything (i.e. all assets and savings) but also set up a bursary using 10% of my pensions combined for a youth organisation I support. I also want to make sure this cannot be contested by other family members.


Do I need to engage a solicitor or can I do this myself please?


Thanks in advance, L

xylophone

https://www.lawscot.org.uk/find-a-solicitor/

in your position I'd have a solicitor draft the will.

Do you need to sort out a letter of nomination in respect of your pensions?

Keep_pedalling

You 100% should do this via a solicitor. Do you have any children? If so you can't simply cut them out fully under Scottish inheritance law.

If your estate is likely to be impacted by IHT you should definitely get married.

CASHMORE

Engage a solicitor. That way they can make sure of no loop holes.

Apodemus

Three things to consider:

The organisations I was intimately involved with at your age are no longer so important to me 20 years later, so I am glad I didn't make any rash promises back then.

Are you sure that both of these pensions will have anything to contribute to your estate for inclusion in your will?

Small burseries are a pain for charities to administer. There are so many of them, each generating only a few pounds of income a year, yet requiring more admin than a single multi-million pound donation. If you really want to help, keep it simple and just write a sum into your will - you could possibly tie that to the residual pension sum if you want to ring-fence in that way.

But as everyone else has said, let a solicitor handle this for you.