Changing the 'disaster' scenario in a will. Codicil?

Savvy_Sue

silvercar said:

I’m surprised your solicitor didn’t advise you to include clauses in the will that covered the scenario you now have. Eg the disaster cause leaving 50% to DIL if they were still married/ was the mother of any grandchildren of yours otherwise she is excluded etc.

Yes, but the scenario @Spendless faces that divorce hasn't yet  started, and can't yet start, and we all know that divorce can take time. 

Yes, you CAN use a codicil (you can do anything in a codicil that you could do in a will!), but they can be tricksy, and this is a potentially tricky situation. So it would be simpler to rip up the existing will (and make sure everyone knows you have done that) and take the small risk of dying intestate, while you arrange to re-write the will. You can of course take a copy of the will before you rip it up, and scribble all over it to indicate your intentions. 

And should the solicitor send you unsigned wills, personally I'd contact them and say that you'd like to make an appointment to come in and sign. There are too many potential pitfalls in the signatures and witnessing for me to want to risk getting that wrong. 

Spendless

Emmia said:

Spendless said:

Marcon said:

Spendless said:

Keep_pedalling said:

Spendless said:

Keep_pedalling said:t

Spendless said:

Our wills are legally binding we signed  and had witnessed  ourselves. Our solicitors don't have any signed wills from us because they sent them out blank to us, we never signed them anywhere other than doing it ourselves and these are at our home.  

I understand that, but I don’t understand why that is a problem. The alternative would be for you to visit the solicitor to be signed at their offices. 

That's exactly what I thought would happen (and what my parents did only a few months ago with a diff solicitor )  and then we would receive a copy of our wills and another copy be stored at the solicitors, which would mean in the event of our copy going missing etc there would be a valid will at the solicitors expressing our wishes. There isn't , only the ones we have at our home.

That should have been explained to you at the initial meeting, and you should have had the option. 

It was. We were told at the initial meeting where we said what our wishes were   that we would go back to the solicitor and sign once the wills had been drawn up. Instead the wills came through the post to us. As they weren't signed we did it ourselves in the presence of witnesses who also signed

But regardless  of what the solicitor said and did then  , we still need to know how to get DIL off our disaster clause, ideally without having to start all over again. 

It's clearly really bothering you, but you're making a huge issue out of nothing. Of course the wills sent to you by post hadn't been signed - you're the signatories! Why such a big deal to get them signed and witnessed at home (as very many people prefer) and then returned to the solicitor's office, either by registered post or simply dropping them back in person?

Go back to the solicitor and get some advice on how to proceed - far safer than relying on random strangers on the internet.

My question was actually how to get  DIL off our will as a beneficiary as she is in the disaster clause  and if this could be done as a codicil?  Hence the title.  I fetched up how our solicitor had sent the wills out to us unsigned despite saying he would call us in to do so (exactly what happened when my parents made their wills a few months ago they went back and signed in the solicitors office ) to explain we could rip them up  as there is no other signed wills  stored with him and if we did this and  were to all die suddenly then we would be dying intestate and DIL wouldn't inherit under our 'disaster scenario'  The solicitor sending us out our wills the way he did  seems to have been picked up on and talked about more so than the question I asked.

You are correct it bothered me he did this because we paid him several £100s for the wills and sending them this way meant if we'd left them unsigned we'd paid  in effect not have a will (which currently is an advantage that we can rip up the only ones and have  DIL not be a beneficiary that way until we can get another solicitor's appt)  

To answer some other questions. 

Potential future grandchildren are included in our current wills and come before any disaster beneficiary. 

The unsigned wills were sent out to us bound and laminated with wording 'The last will......' on it . We had previously been sent an email for us to look through to see if that was correct and any amendments - we had 1 or 2 alterations (nothing major)  and the corrections were in the posted out wills. 

But as above my actual question is can you change a potential beneficiary by a codicil or not? 

@Spendless the answer is really simple.

MAKE A NEW WILL

I don't understand why you're so resistant to the easiest solution to your problem.

I'm not resistant. It's just today is Sunday and the solicitors isn't open to ask. It came into my mind because my parents fetched up yesterday that DS is a beneficiary of their wills and they hold their property as tenants in common and if this would create an issue in the event of a sudden death of one of them and anything DIL could claim. That had me start thinking about ours, so I decided to ask on here to see if anyone knew my query.

It's also not true that I wasn't bothered at the time about receiving the  unsigned wills. I asked on here if this was usual because I was surprised as it hadn't been what we were told. We went and got them signed and witnessed ourselves because that was the quickest thing to do.  

Of course I would rather not have to  spend £100s for new wills having only paid for ours last year if there was a cheaper way (and I accept a cheaper way is to rip them up and not have one but this causes other issues) 

The solicitor never fetched up to include any clauses. We made the will in anticipation of their marriage. It included any potential Grandchildren before a disaster scenario so felt her being mother of any grandchildren would be covered that way anyway. We'd not even  thought about  a disaster scenario until the solicitor mentioned it  and as such we thought we were protecting DIL in the event none of us were around, since she moved to our area to be with DS.  

doodling

Hi,

Codicils are really only useful if you haven't invented word processors yet, or you are on plummeting plane and only have a pen and the back of an envelope (and some witnesses, although I expect in that exact scenario there would be some debate around validity as presumably the witnesses may not be able to give assurance if the codicil was questioned).

On the assumption that you are not on a plummeting plane (if you were then this post is probably going to arrive too late to help you) then you have the choice of:

1. Writing a codicil yourself (which is a bonkers thing to do, we have invented word processors!).
2. Re-writing your will yourself omitting the relevant bequest.
3. Destroying your will (which will revert to intestacy or a previous will, if one exists and hasn't been otherwise invalidated).
4. Getting a solicitor to re-write your will.
5. Getting a solicitor to write a codicil (which is a bonkers thing to do, we have invented word processors!).
6. Doing nothing.

Or some combination of 1-5 above.  I would recommend using a solicitor which basically leaves option 4 but if this is urgent then you might want to do 1, 2 or 3, noting that 1 and 2 carry the risk that you might make changes to the text which render the will unclear or invalid (I think (2) is less risky to the layman than (1) if you do a straight copy with minor changes and bind the result appropriately but others here may disagree).

Happy_Kitties

Savvy_Sue said:

And should the solicitor send you unsigned wills, personally I'd contact them and say that you'd like to make an appointment to come in and sign. There are too many potential pitfalls in the signatures and witnessing for me to want to risk getting that wrong. 

Quite agree, a relative did DIY wills (current and previous) from a template, they are sound on paper except that probate have found the witnessing was not executed correctly. It has been such a headache, nightmare and wasted a stupid amount of time.

In regards to Spendless question, after just going through what I have been through, I would want the easy water tight option, do a new will and make sure it is signed at the solicitors as the headaches with extra faffs, really is not worth it because it truly does become a nightmare for those who are left behind

silvercar

I'm glad you have posted. It has given me food for thought. 

First grandchild on the way. DS and DIL happily married at the moment. In a disaster scenario I hadn't thought about whether DIL should have an inheritance from us to bring up (future) DGC or whether DGC should inherit.