How much does it cost to make a will?
There would either be a fixed fee or it could be depending on the complexity. It could be a variable fee. There tends to be a typical checklist to ensure that all of your possessions are encapsulated in your will. There's several professional organizations, for example, the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners that have a good checklist that I think is available for free online. So you can just Google that and find, and there's some, some things, these are some things that you'll find on the checklist.
You'd find things such as your personal circumstances, your marriage, that means your marital status, previous marriages or civil partnerships. Why did those previous marriages or civil partnerships end? For example, did someone die? Did someone get divorced? Who are the children or who you treat as children? Do you have any dependents? Do you have any family conflicts? What are your assets? Do you have a home? Personal possessions? Cars? Investments? Bank accounts, any other assets in which you have a business interest, crypto, your iTunes account, your Apple account, your Google account. Do you have a pension? Do you have life insurance? Do you have an endowment plan through your work, a pension plan through your work? How do you own those assets? Do you own it in your own name? Do you own it with somebody else? Who are the beneficiaries to that? Do you have any debt? or liabilities? I mean, the most obvious one would be a mortgage or a credit card.
But have you, do you owe any other bills? Do you expect any increase in your assets before your death? For example, are you inheriting anything else from anyone else? Are you expecting any gifts? Have you won the lottery? You know, there's so many things that go into it. You know, have you made any gifts in the last seven years? Remember we were talking about the potentially exempt transfers earlier. Do you have a pattern of giving? Do you have any anticipated lifetime gifts? Do you have any charities to support? If you're a spiritual person, do you support your church, your mosque , your temple? Who are your executors going to be? And that's very important. Do you want to have someone that's related to you, someone that you know personally? Or do you want a professional executor? How are those fees going to be satisfied if your children are on the 18? Who went? Who you gonna appoint as guardians? And of course, do you have any pets? Who are going to take care of your cat, your dog, your fishes, any other sorts of pets that you may have? What about your funeral and burial wishes? Who's going to pay for that? Have you been paying into a plan? Do you want to be cremated? Do you have a plot? And then who do you want the rest of your estate to be left to? Who is, who is near and dear to you? If you have no one, do you want to leave it to the Red Cross or the Red Crescent? Other forms of charity?
Those are some of the key things that you'd find in a checklist. So if you start walking through that checklist, you then start to kind of, well, not kind of, but you then start to begin to appreciate not only the complexity, but the simplicity of it. This is what you have accumulated over a lifetime, and this is what, after that lifetime has ended, what you want to dispose of to those who you love and care for.
We hope that this has given you plenty to think about. If it's, if it's simpler, you know, it's very vanilla. I think it could be a more fixed kind of version if it's more complicated than clearly, you know not.
-Learnings from Episode 2 of Vera Legal Insights with Mikhail Charles.
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Note: the contents of this Vodcast are just us having a conversation and any responses are for information or educational purposes only, they do not constitute legal advice, the facts of each case vary so if you have a legal query please obtain professional legal advice valid to your individual circumstances. Vera, the host or the guest would not be liable for any damage or loss caused.
