New Will - What to do about the house?

cotsvale

Hi

Please can someone direct me to the correct board for this.

We are soon to re write our wills and remortgage the house at the same time. We are married and own the house together. I know that the rules were changed in Oct but Martin has not updated his article yet on Inheritance tax. Should we change the mortgage to owners in common? If so how and where do we go to do this? Is it relevant any more?

thank you

Murdina

The advantage of being tenants in common as opposed to joint tenants is that you can leave your half to whom you like. If you are joint tenants, it passes to the other automatically by survivorship.
The changes to IHT (which are not actually enacted yet) are likely to benefit you rather than meaning you have to jump through some complicated hoops which is what people were doing before the changes. They mean in very simple terms that, if you leave everything to each other in your wills, and then on second death to whoever, then on that second death both your IHT nil rate bands can be used. However, the first thing to think about is who you are each leaving your estate to and, if each other, who it will go to once you are both dead. Be clear what you want before you start on the will writing. The second thing, having decided that, is to consider what you are worth i.e. will you actually be due to pay any inheritance tax at present? Finally, wills should be reconsidered every 5 years or so, so you do not need to try and second guess everything that might happen to you in next 20 years.