Concerned re: parents DIY will

Roxie

My parents are both approaching 80 and as their eldest child they informed me they have a DIY 'joint will' they have written up themselves on a printed form they bought years ago and have named me and my sister as executors. This has been placed in a drawer along with letters to us detailing that they would like to be buried and they have reserved plots at the local cemetery.

I have never had to deal with a death before and I am really concerned that this DIY will is not legal and for my peace of mind I need to know what I have to do with it when the time comes? Do I need to take it to a solicitor or do I use it more as an expression of their wishes as to where they want their assets to go? They have children and grandchildren and have made it clear they want grandchildren to receive a set sum each and children to receive equal amounts of what is left, when they have both gone.

I'm pleased they have spoken with me about this in advance and I have tried to get them to see a solicitor and have a will drawn up properly but they are adamant they aren't going to do this, sadly they are extremely frugal and see spending money on a solicitor's will as a waste. I am the only person they have spoken to about this, they have asked me not to discuss with anyone else and while I want to respect this, it's causing me concern that we are all going to face a lot of problems dealing with a DIY will twice over in the next few years.

Thanks in advance for any advice you can give. Roxie

getmore4less

Get a copy and have some have a look.

Key thing to ask them is who were the witnesses.

cherry76

Ask to see the will. My elderly parents second wills are diy. My mum did use the first wills drawn by a will writer and updated the contents. I am happy with it and will be the executor of their estate. You can persuade your parents to have their wills drawn during free wills week and it should not cost a lot.

Mojisola

Roxie wrote: »

My parents are both approaching 80 and as their eldest child they informed me they have a DIY 'joint will' they have written up themselves on a printed form they bought years ago and have named me and my sister as executors.

They have children and grandchildren and have made it clear they want grandchildren to receive a set sum each and children to receive equal amounts of what is left, when they have both gone.

they are extremely frugal and see spending money on a solicitor's will as a waste.

Tell them that solicitors make far more money sorting out badly-drawn up home made wills than they do from writing one from scratch.

It may be that their home-made wills are perfectly fine - wishes expressed clearly and signed and witnessed correctly - but you don't want to wait until they are dead to find out that they aren't.

If they actually only have one 'joint will', it's almost certainly not worth the paper it's written on. If they have two mirror wills, they may be alright.

If they won't do anything about it, show them what the law says will happen to their estate when they die under the intestacy rules. Their grandchildren won't inherit anything unless the legal beneficiaries volunteer to pass money onto them.

If any of the beneficiaries are on means tested benefits, they won't be allowed to give away their inheritance.

pandora205

There's a useful book published by Which (though it's few years old now - There are others of the same type on Amazon) which we used. You don't necessarily need a solicitor if their affairs are straight forward and you are prepared to do the paperwork yourself.

securityguy

Do you have any other siblings, and is the will likely to be anything other than "divide evenly between my children"? In which case, a DIY will is a pain, but isn't likely to be disastrous in the long term, because if it's invalid the terms on intestacy will do the right thing anyway. However, if the will is invalid and they have substantial assets it might be problematic when the first of them dies, because you will then have to do full intestacy on them which might involve complex issues like life interests and division of assets between the survivor and their children.

Tell them to sort their wills out properly and, if they're just being mean, offer to pay.

Mojisola

Work through this and see what will happen if the will isn't valid -
https://www.gov.uk/inherits-someone-dies-without-will

Keep_pedalling

securityguy wrote: »

Do you have any other siblings, and is the will likely to be anything other than "divide evenly between my children"? In which case, a DIY will is a pain, but isn't likely to be disastrous in the long term, because if it's invalid the terms on intestacy will do the right thing anyway. However, if the will is invalid and they have substantial assets it might be problematic when the first of them dies, because you will then have to do full intestacy on them which might involve complex issues like life interests and division of assets between the survivor and their children.

Tell them to sort their wills out properly and, if they're just being mean, offer to pay.

This is the main danger. If the first to die has over £250k of assets, intestacy rules start to make things more complicated.

securityguy

Of course, the nightmare is a will which _is_ valid, but does something that isn't intended. Given the amount of pernicious nonsense that appears to circulate amongst the elderly about "protecting their house" and "care fees" and "avoiding probate" and so on, that would hardly be out of the question. That would leave the executors the ethically dubious but practically sensible mechanism of destroying the will and reverting to intestacy, but only if the problems in the will were immediately apparent before they applied for probate.

DIY wills: not moneysaving.

Mojisola

securityguy wrote: »

Of course, the nightmare is a will which _is_ valid, but does something that isn't intended.

Another common 'mistake' is to distribute the estate as it is when the will is made without taking future changes into account.

That could go either way - an inheritance which takes the estate into inheritance tax territory or the use of a lot of the money which ends up with, say, grandchildren being given their set amount and hardly anything left for the deceased's children.

Roxie

A big thank you to all for your very good points. They do own their own home and have a small amount of savings so although not a massive amount, the implications of a will not drawn up properly could cause a lot of headaches. It seems I am going to have to ask some delicate questions next time I visit and try to get to look at their will, I have no idea who witnessed it so that's one of the first things I need to establish, I wouldn't be at all surprised if they have just signed and witnessed it themselves, which would be a good starting point for me to suggest it isn't valid and they to get it done by solicitors. The joint willl aspect does worry me so at the very least I need to ensure they each have their own will, and will argue the point that saving money now doing a DIY will could be a costly mistake if the wills are not drawn up correctly.