To think that wills should be public documents

[GnomeDePlume]

before the testator dies.

Not a TAAT but so many times in RL and on MN I have heard about wills which do the opposite of what was intended or which make assumptions about who should/should not benefit from an estate.

If the will was public then any potentially interested person could read the will. If they dont agree with it then they can raise it with the testator.

As wills are often made many years before the testator dies clauses which seemed perfectly fair at the time can become out of date (eg leaving an estate to named grandchildren can seem like a nice thing until a late arriving grandchild is born and not being named is effectively disinherited).

The testator has to own the decisions they have made rather than leave the executor to deal with everything whe there is nothing they can do to change things.

It is awful to watch all the money grabbing going on over people's money and goods even before they die.
It makes me want to spend every penny I ever have or had.
I have watched this professionally as well as in my own family. It is disgusting. Would the OP be willing to try to influence some fit and healthy man or would she wait for him to be old and frail?

The more grabbing that goes on the more likely it would be that your elders will not have you as a beneficiary. I wouldnt

StillMe1 we are pretty much the older generation now with wills of our own. DM probably won't be leaving much bar her extensive collection of craft bits and pieces (more than happy for these not to come in my direction).

TalkinPaece that just adds to the problem.

Say my estate at the time of writing my will is essentially my house plus a few other bits and pieces so around £250,000. I leave £5k each to 3 old school friends to take that cruise we always used to laugh about. The rest of my estate will go to my adult children with them named as executors. What with various costs that leaves £225k to split between my DCs so £75k each.

Only by the time it comes to settle the estate I have had a few years in a care home and my assets are now more like £25k. That £5k each to my friends is practically all my estate, my DCs get nothing plus they get all the hassle of being my executors.

Probably a fairly common situation. If I had capacity then I would probably want to cancel the cash bequests and simply split my estate between my DCs. But if I had capacity then I wouldnt be in a care home and I would want to leave the cash bequest.

But you can write conditional bequests into your will, so why not just do that?

if the value of my estate once expenses are paid exceeds £X then I leave £Y to my friend Mandy. If the value does not exceed £X, I leave nothing to Mandy.

You can even make reference to inflation rates etc. to make it a time-proof clause.

The alternative, of course, is that your kids have to have the awkward task of saying ‘mum, I’ve had a look at your will and we want to inherit more from you than you’re currently giving us so I don’t think you should give Mandy that money.’ And even if they are willing to say that to you (I know I would never be so grabby with my own parents), what will you do if Mandy then comes to you and says ‘I see you cancelled the bequest to me. Don’t you like me anymore?’

And you’re thinking ‘bloody hell, I’m old and in a care home and to be honest I could do without spending my last years stuck in a squabble between people obsessed with how they’re going to pick over my bones when I die’.

People would stop making wills to avoid any trouble or upset. Stupid idea. Nobody's business except the individual.

I don't understand why people think because they are family they are 'entitled' to someone money or estate !! My Nan left money to her children& grandchildren! When she died her husband (SGD) left it to a blind charity!! My other nan wanted to leave her money to her 2 children and if one was to die there half would go to the other child NOT his children so my uncle stopped speaking to her then after 6 months forced her to change the will! Now he has died I have the shit of taking my poor old now to the solicitor to change it back 🙄

Excellent posts by HBStowe

Dreadful idea
For all the reasons HBStowe has said better than I can

I'm in my early 60s, with no close relatives and it is MY business whether I leave money to charities that I think worthwhile,
or to cousins whom I haven't seen for decades and who don't realise what I have to leave

The last thing I want is vultures congregating, especially in laer years

Gosh, 109 posts and I don't think one poster has agreed with OP!

If this was the case I’d not make a will. That way everything would fall to DH and my kids, but without having to advertise what I do and don’t have to extended family that I’m quite happy to have assuming that we’re mortgaged up to the eyeballs and scrimping for me to be a SAHP.

They’d be like vultures on my case at the hint of savings or owning outright, and that I can do without as they wouldn’t dream of asking for loans atm as I’m the poor relation.

Most wills I have seen dont say how much is being left just how it is being left so an estate being split between charities and distant cousins doesnt say whether you are leaving £14k or £14m.

My own will is dull and uncomplicated. I am happy for my DCs to know how my estate is left, how at least at the moment it is made up (insurances, death in service benefit and the like), where to find the relevant documents.

On the whole I do feel a duty to leave whatever estate I have to my DCs. If in the end care fees take the greater part of it then so be it but I would still rather that than spend it all then throw myself on the meagre mercies of the state or my DCs feel guilted into having to pay for my care.

I'm going right back to the op and this is probably touched upon - but im not reading 5 pages of if-but-deviating comments...

As wills are often made many years before the testator dies clauses which seemed perfectly fair at the time can become out of date (eg leaving an estate to named grandchildren can seem like a nice thing until a late arriving grandchild is born and not being named is effectively disinherited).

If thatts the case, tehn your dolicitor is frankly, a bit shit! Our early (mirror) wills stated our estate would equally be divided between Named Child A , Named Child B and any subsequent children of the marriage. Our up to date will state our estate will be equally divided between 3 x named children or if they predecease their own children thiar portion will be divided equally between their own children.

That is such an easy way to prevent misunderstandings.

And on to your last post OP wanted to be sure that we appointed the guardians that we wanted if we were to die when the DCs were young. this comes up. Every. Single. Time. You cannot will your children. You can indicate who you might like to look after them but the State will ultimately decided who will have them. Eg you may decide your sister will be having them - your sister has subsequently got divorced, lives in a B&B and her new BF is a drug dealer with several convitions for assault adn armed robbery. She is not getting your kids. Eg you may decide you parents are having them. You may have written your will when they were sprightly early 60's but 5 years down the line, one has early onset dementia and a hip replacement and the other has a stroke, they wont be getting them either.

FFS - why does this site have no spell check waaa >stabbing one fingered on a phone

well fuck, why don't we publish everyone's bank accounts and medical records too, i mean thats your business too isnt it? no? why not? cause its none of my business? right! neither is anyones will :) HTH

Nope thats a terrible idea.

What i do.with the 50p i will have left when i die is my bloody business nobody elses.

Why on earth do you think someone has the right to tell someone what to do with the money they have worked for and saved? Never mind pressurise them to change thier will to suit them. How utterly entitled is that?

I didnt consider my parents were my personal cash cows. I visited/looked after them because i loved them not for their bloody money.

Your will is private nobody else except you and the recipients business.

God the sense of 'me, me, me i expect x,y and z or else i will throw a strop' these days is gobsmacking.

Willow2017

“What i do.with the 50p i will have left when i die is my bloody business nobody else's”

😂 Willow, in case you didn’t know, I was extremely interested to discover (MoneyBox, BBC) just a few days ago that unlike some debts, most credit card debts die with you. I immediately began rehearsing the conversation “Yes, Mr. AmEx, that’s right, £10,000 limit please. What’s that, my age, oh a mere 97 ...”

I view wills in the same way as medical records and voting rights. Totally private unless you choose to disclose, furthermore asking for information from others I regard as rude.
Someone (old and infirm) has disclosed to me that I will benefit from their demise. I've no reason to think this is a bluff, but it makes me feel uncomfortable when I do things to help out of genuine kindness and love that it could be assumed that my motives are money related. I'd rather not know and carry on relationships without knowing their plans. Then again, I am also an atheist. I am kind to people because it's what I feel is right, not in attempt to get to heaven/not go to hell.

Smellslikemiddleagespirit no but it has been nice some of the responses have been thoughtful and discursive rather than vitriolic.

With the growth in home ownership, insurance plans etc more people have the potential to have an estate to leave. At the same time families have become more complicated. With the potential for care fees at the end of life the final value of an estate is uncertain.

Many people write their will at a time of change then put it away and forget about it. DPiL's wills sat for 30 years before they were needed. Thankfully no complicated provisions for the executors to unpick.

When we rewrote our wills after 20 years, looking through the originals I realised that 2 out of the three executors were dead (and had been for a couple of years) and the third would probably no longer be up to the job. Not a nice problem to leave behind.

PlainSpeakingStraightTalking regarding the naming of GCs thankfully DFiL spotted the flaw in his FiL's will.

In case anyone automatically assumes the worst, this meant that DH's cousins born later were not accidentally left out. DFiL was a sensible and honourable man who would not have wanted his own DCs to gain a benefit that cousins were excluded from.

Regarding guardianship. We were advised by the solicitor at the time we wrote our first wills to nominate guardians for our then very young DCs in the event of both DH and I dying.

Despite being on the receiving end of a shit legacy (too complicated to explain but basically a mill stone rather than a benefit) I don't think this would generally be a good idea. In my situation it would have been very useful to have previewed the will and pointed out the obvious pitfalls (and the waste-of-space solicitor should have done so) but my relative could have given me sight of her will before she died if she wanted to.
We have, in the family, also had a situation where a second wife had instructions to ensure her stepson was looked after and (surprise!) she kept everything for herself and her DCs. Again, seeing the will would have given the opportunity to point out that if it wasn't written down it might not happen.
However, neither of those cases would make it reasonable to make all wills public. There may be a generational thing about feeling it is rude to talk about money and death. Perhaps solicitors should be encouraging people to talk to prospective beneficiaries/executors about what is in their wills. But that should be an individual choice and even if my family had seen the wills in our cases which have 'gone wrong' we might not have been able to persuade the writers to amend them (and would possibly have caused ill-feeling if we had tried).

Re house sold prices being publicly available - this is very useful when you are buying (or even selling) to get an idea of a reasonable price for that area/type and size of property.

No wills are private documents and I wouldn’t want someone poking around mine.

Most wills I have seen dont say how much is being left just how it is being left so an estate being split between charities and distant cousins doesnt say whether you are leaving £14k or £14m

OP, the Probate Office publishes the value of the estate. It used to be essential reading in local newspapers.

AutumnCrow exactly, it becomes a public document in the end anyway. In the end anyone can find out who inherited what from Mavis. Wonder why A, B & C benefited but not D? They can read that Mildred got the Rembrandt and George got the tiara. If there are any questions on why the distribution was done as it was they remain unanswerable. D doesnt know if they were left out deliberately or by mistake. George and Mildred are quite happy with the bequests they have received but cant actually remember who Mavis is.

We have changed our wills 3 times over the past ten years to account for deaths of beneficiaries, change in circumstances etc. Surely no one writes a will and then never revisits it?
I was just imagining the scenario of some kind of official registration for the wills of the living, as per op's suggestion. First there would be a new government department set up, and new laws with possibly penalties (fine or prison) for not registering and publishing your will. Because of the cost of all this there would be a hefty fee attached, plus an additional fee every time you made a change. Then whole fly by night companies would set themselves up, "Will registration, we do it all for you, for a one off fee!" Solicitors would have a dedicated will writing and registering service. Meanwhile, any one with criminal intent would be carefully examining the database to see who they could rob, scam or otherwise rip off. Because of the cost and lack of privacy, people would stop writing wills, which rather defeats the object.
So no, I don't really think it's a sensible idea.

😂 Willow, in case you didn’t know, I was extremely interested to discover (MoneyBox, BBC) just a few days ago that unlike some debts, most credit card debts die with you. I immediately began rehearsing the conversation “Yes, Mr. AmEx, that’s right, £10,000 limit please. What’s that, my age, oh a mere 97 ...” grin

Thanks Langrish will keep that in mind