Am I being upsold re making our will?

[RobertDeNiro]

Dh and I are making our mirror wills. We own our home outright (worth about 270k) and have about 30k in savings, plus we both have life insurance for 250k.
Will maker guy is suggesting we should, on top of making our normal will with our named guardian for ds in it, make a protected property trust in case one of us goes in to a home, and also a pilot trust. I don’t know if we need both those things, it’s going to cost us an extra 1.5k to add in to the will and we don’t have that extra cash right now?

Bump!

Hopefully someone else can give you an answer but, if they haven't already, I imagine they'll be inviting you both to arrange Powers of Attorney as well which will add several hundred to your bill - forewarned is forearmed and all that.

This is my job (when not on MN!)

Pilot trust is a no unless one of you has massive pension benefits or death in service benefits.

Property trust...hmm. You are in the right bracket to be worrying about care costs (assets wise, I don’t know your age). Most solicitors (as opposed to will writers) don’t go in for these hugely but we do like trusts for other reasons (which this would fulfil).

LPAs would be a better “up sell” really! Are those sorted?

don’tcall guilty as charged! But at least LPAs will have a benefit to OP if she chooses to do them.

What are LPAs?

Ah so google says it’s a power of attorney thing. Does everyone do these? Me and dh are 40.

Everyone should.

Everyone who has any assets should. Especially important if you have children.

Another private client solicitor here. Wouldn’t bother with a pool or trust unless significant pension assets. Property trust - hi him, I personally wouldn’t bother with the value of the house, but it’s up to you.
I would recommend LPAs though. And not just as an upsell - after my friend had a brain injury and had all kinds of trouble as lost capacity in his 30s, I recommend them to everyone. I appreciate it does look somewhat like upselling though....

Power of attorney is a good thing but something you should be able to arrange yourself. I wouldn’t pay someone to do it for me.

So if we didn’t do power of attorney now, could we do it when we reach retirement age instead?

I have just updated will and done LPA.
Dont wait till retirement.

When we made our wills we nominated guardians for our DCs when they were under 18. This didn't mean these people would have taken the DCs but been responsible for looking out for the DCs interests. When we made our wills again recently the issue of trusts came up. If we had gone with that our property would have been left to the DCs with DH (or me) having a lifetime interest.

The care home thing is a tricky one. A trust would protect the assets but would mean that the capital wasn't available to pay for our care. Government funding for care isn't generous. In your dotage do you want your care to be curtailed to protect assets for your children?

You could but the problem is you need capacity. It's fine if you sort it before you lose it, but if you decide to leave it until you're older then you lose capacity in a sudden and unexpected way before then, it becomes a problem.

LPAs are nothing to do with recahing retirement age. Unfortunately loads of things happen to younger people.

Care fees planning can be deferred (if you want to do it at all) but in all honesty the LPAs shouldn’t be. Controversial but they are higher priority than the Wills (assuming you are legally married, under the IHT threshold and prepared to do a separate document re guardianship).

Yes you can definitely do them yourself. I wouldn’t if I had lots of investments because there are some extra clauses you’ll need but for a house and some savings you’ll be fine. Forms are all online.

Yes we are legally married.

So you mean we can do the LPA ourselves with downloaded forms?

You can do the LPA yourself on the government website.

The forms and the guidance notes are on gov.uk.

To those here in the know - I am divorced and in my late forties. I have a home and investments/savings both in excess of £500k. I was planning to do the LPA next year when my younger child turns 18 - are you saying I should use a solicitor because there are clauses I won't know about? (I am a solicitor, but this is not my field).

Absolutely. You’ll just have to pay the registration fee.

Thank you guys!

George with liquid assets in that region I would pay someone to do it, but I’m sure other people will disagree! Alternatively if you have access to LNB I’m sure the clauses will be on there somewhere! Everything else is!

LPA would give you a legal right to act on your dh behalf and vice vesa should anything happen that caused loss of mental capacity, could be an accident or illness

As another solicitor whose area this isn't, if I had assets of that value I'd pay someone too. For people who just have a house and a few bits of savings and feel reasonably form confident, I'd do it myself.

I've done LPA s myself without needing paid legal help. It costs some money to get them registered but I think is worth doing.

It took a little reading and research to get my head round but I think for most people it can be done themselves. It can get a little morbid considering what you really want. Thats all.

The horrible situation I was worried about was if DH and I were both incapacitated but not dead. So we have given SIL power of attorney so she can run our affairs for our children. Otherwise how do they get fed/clothed/educated?