Free and Cheap Wills discussion area

The trust in question is called an accumulation & maintenance trust, the trustees can spend the money looking after the children or can save up the money and its interest if that seems sensible. The trust is treated much like an ordinary living individual - though it would not get a personal allowance, however any money it paid to the children would include a tax certificate (R185) and that tax could be reclaimed by the child against his/her own personal tax allowance.
Before Gordon Brown such a trust could exist until the "children" reached an age of reason at 25 and got their hands on the money. This has now been reduced to 18, hence my remark about buying a motor bike and killing themselves.
The change was really introduced to prevent seriously rich families avoiding higher rates of tax on an inheritance, now, after the beneficiary reaches 18, the trust will be potentially liable yo higher rates if income tax and accumulates a low rate of inheritance tax every year to encourage it to "die" sooner rather than later.
In your case the trust arrangement is unlikely to be wealthy enough to have to pay IHT and additional rate income tax BUT unless your trustees can handle the administration and tax reporting involved, they would have to pay someone to do it for them, and that would use up the annual income of the small trust.:mad:

Google Trust Inheritance. At least one of the links should take you to an old thread on MSE, which may help you decide.

However, in general, I'd say that as your affairs are not straightforward, you'd do better to use a solicitor. It's a good idea to have a plan, but to be open to suggestions.

the things to consider include how you want to treat your shared children, and your non-shared children. What DH and I have done may well not be appropriate for you: the spouse inherits everything on the first death, then it all goes to our (shared) children. In your case, the spouse could inherit everything on the first death and leave it all to the cat's home, so if you want any or all of the children to be sure of an inheritance you need to leave something on the first death. If some of them are still young, then a trust is needed. And so on.

Thanks Sue and John for your responses, they are both very helpful :T

Savvy_Sue wrote: »

Google Trust Inheritance. At least one of the links should take you to an old thread on MSE, which may help you decide.

As soon as I came off the phone to them I Googled them and their phone number - resulted in just the "who calls me" type of results. Also did a mse search but so many unrelated threads that I must have missed the ones I was after, but I now find that Googling just their name or along with mse finds some very interesting threads.

So thanks very much for pointing me in that direction :T

John_Pierpoint wrote: »

Interest in possession trust for the life of the survivor !

Simple to administer - stops the survivor doing anything "silly" in their dotage.

Hmmm never heard of that sort of trust, quick Google of it and it gives me something to think about as the 'silly' issue is something that has crossed my mind a few times. Thanks for that :T

I believe that November is the charity will making month, I would think I am too late to make an appointment with anyone for that now, but seeing an actual Solicitor is the way I need to go.

Cheers

Hi (not sure if I'm in the right place! sorry if i'm not) Anyway..I really need some advice please.
My husband and I had a will drawn about 20 years ago and for a while we’ve been thinking of updating some details which are no longer applicable. We did apply for “Will aid” last year but unfortunately there was no more appointments available with our local solicitors. We just left it and somehow didn’t think any more of it until this morning.

I received an email from "Nectar Daily deals" offering a deal on Will writing and Mirror Will writing service for £17 (Normally £19 or mirror wills (for two people who wish to have virtually identical wills for £22.) with a company called Saxon Wills and Estate Planning.(Bargain! Or is it?)

The company offers a 45 minute telephone appointment through “Virtual Adviser System” where you can talk to the adviser whilst looking at questions, diagrams, flow charts on your computer screen. Tel no 0844 742 1389 (which is going to be quite an expensive call for 45 minutes which no doubt will be longer as we will need to ask questions) Once you are happy the will is sent to you within 7 days.(Seems a bit too good to be true to me or am I being too sceptical?)

I was just wondering has anyone heard or used this company? I have been doing some research but cannot find anything to suggest that this company is/not trustworthy.

Reading through some of the threads on MSE I’ve learned quite a lot about making a will and I was really shocked to find that having a solicitor as executor(s) as well as a family member you can still have problems. Because when we made our last will, our daughter was under age, we appointed my nephew to be executor and guardian to our daughter should anything happen to both of us. However at the time our solicitor suggested that we appoint them as well as it would make life easier. So we did and now we are not sure that it would.

My husband an I are both in our 60’s and have one daughter and my husband have 3 adult children from a previous marriage. So making this will is one of the most important things we are doing so we want to get it right this time. Being pensioners, we really can’t afford the prices the solicitors charge and we really want to make life easier as possible for our daughter.

So if anyone has any views on the above company I would be very grateful to hear them before making a decision. Any other suggestions will be very much appreciated. Thank you

I received an email from "Nectar Daily deals" offering a deal on Will writing and Mirror Will writing service for £17 (Normally £19 or mirror wills (for two people who wish to have virtually identical wills for £22.) with a company called Saxon Wills and Estate Planning.(Bargain! Or is it?)

I would be extremely suspicious of something that only cost the price of 3 or 4 packets of fags!