Four reasons to review your will

Firstly, many wills that we review have errors in them. This can range from incorrect title, to spelling mistakes. We recently came across a will that left assets to “my daughter ...” but when we delved more deeply, we discovered that the person in question was the client’s step-daughter and was never legally adopted. This meant that she wouldn’t inherit anything.

Rectifying such a mistake after death can be very difficult and costly and potentially impossible in some cases, so it is important to correct any errors as soon as you can.

Wills must be correctly signed and witnessed in order to be valid. We recently came across a case where a brother had witnessed the will despite expecting to inherit £20,000 from it. By witnessing the will, the brother invalidated the bequest. It turned out that the testator deliberately got his brother to witness his will in the knowledge that the brother wouldn’t inherit, all because of some argument they had as children.

Secondly, we have seen wills that have circular arrangements where the husband’s will has his wife as executor and the wife’s will has her husband as executor. This clearly isn’t going to work for both of them.

Thirdly we have seen wills that, based on their structure, will generate significant amounts of tax. This is why we always recommend that a specialist financial planner with comprehensive tax knowledge reviews your will, especially after the recent legislation changes.

Finally the vast majority of wills that we review leave assets to the “wrong person”. What I mean by this is that assets are left in such a way that the Health Trust has access in the event of the surviving partner needing long term care. This is such a simple thing to protect against, yet many wills fail to do this.

The wrong person can also mean a future spouse or partner of any of the beneficiaries. With the divorce rate approaching 50 per cent, without the correct wording in a will assets can end up going in directions that were never intended.

David Hill is a Chartered Financial Planner and Trust & Estate Practitioner at Hills Financial Planning, 15 Agnew Street, Larne. He can be contacted on 028 28276814, email [email protected] or see www.hillsfinancialplanning.co.uk