The risk of DIY Wills

Many people understand the importance of making a Will, but despite their assets, may decide not to instruct a Solicitor in to advise on and draft their Will, but instead turn to budget products like using a pre-prepared template or online websites or even draft their own DIY Will.

In this article, Alison Craggs, a partner in our Private Client Team in Oxford, explores the risks of doing your own Will, the advantages of instructing a Solicitor and how we can help.

What are the risks of doing your own Will?

There are many risks, including:

  • Ambiguous Language: A DIY Will is often badly drafted, containing wording that is unclear, leading to uncertainty regarding the division of the estate on death and potential family disputes and costly litigation.
  • Generic Templates: Pre-prepared Templates where you simply fill in blank boxes or Online Wills are often inflexible and may not cater for your personal circumstances, for example, they may not cater for blended families or complex estates.  Often people then hand amending those templates to try to achieve what they want, which then creates more problems.
  • No consideration of the tax implications: Without professional advice, you may cause more inheritance tax to be paid in your estate than would otherwise be the case.
  • Lack of validity: To be valid a Will needs to be executed correctly.  With a DIY, template or online Will you are left to deal with all the signing formalities yourself.  If the Will is not signed correctly, it would be invalid, meaning that your estate could be distributed in accordance with the intestacy rules, which may not be what you would want.

What are the advantages of instructing a Solicitor?

The advantages include:

  • Tailored Advice: No two clients’ situations are the same.  A Solicitor will look at your family, your assets and your specific wishes and advise on the best Will structure for you.
  • Estate planning expertise: A Solicitor would advise on:
    • The most tax efficient way to draft your Will to save inheritance tax on your death to ensure that more goes to your loved ones;
    • How to help to protect your assets from potential care home fees; and
    • How to help protect your estate from a claim being brought against it.
  • Avoid Disputes: A well drafted Solicitor prepared Will, will mean that there is no ambiguity in the drafting and therefore avoid costly disputes and family conflict after your death.
  • Validity: We would oversee the execution of your Will to ensure that it meets all the legal formalities in terms of signing, witnessing etc.
  • Storing your Will: We offer safe storage of your Will at no charge.
  • Insurance: All law firms are regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority and are required to have professional indemnity insurance, so that in the unlikely event that something did go wrong a client would be put back into the position they should have been.

How we can help

At The Burnside Partnership we specialise in estate planning and can help you to put in place a Will that is tailored to your wishes and ensure that it is done in a straightforward way.

We would have an initial consultation to find out more about you, your family, your assets and advise on the best Will for you. 

Following that initial meeting, we would then send you our Letter of Engagement and draft your Will.  We would then have a meeting with you to go through your Will and if there were any revisions we would make those and then attend to the signing of your Will.  Following the signing meeting we would store your Will and send you a copy for your records.  If in the future you wish to update your Will, then we could easily do so.

For more information or to arrange an appointment please contact Alison Craggs on 01865 987781 or email alison.craggs@theburnsidepartnership.com. Alison is based in our Oxford office.

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