No will - is life insurance subject to intestacy rules and would this cause a delay?

[drylavender]

My DH has no will. I’m a SAHM with young DC and have been asking him to sort this out for years. DH tells me that he has life insurance and that I’d get a payout from his work too if he died however I worry that it would form part of his estate and be subject to interstacy rules without a will, and that no will will cause a delay even though I’m named as beneficiary. I’m financially reliant on him so this is a massive worry. If he died I wouldn’t even be able to cover next months bills as his salary goes into his personal account. I’ve looked on the life insurer provider’s site but some of the info seems contradictory to me. In one part it makes it sound as though it’s easy if a beneficiary is named but then in another it says not having a will can make it more complicated and interstacy could apply. He knows how worried I am - I regularly lose sleep over it and ask him to get a will made but I can’t make him sort it out. So I will worry less if the life insurance isn’t affected by not having a will as long as a beneficiary is named. Does anyone know anything about this?

The bereavement payment is only for 18 months and is viewed as an "income" in terms of Universal Credit which if you were say divorced and receiving child maintenance is not included.

The bereavement payment is also taxed after the first 12 months.

Unless your husbands life policy is linked to your mortgage you don't need to pay off the mortgage with it. You can choose to keep the money and keep paying the mortgage until you figure out your monthly income/cash and whether/how much if the mortgage you wish to pay off.

Financially it would be more beneficial to invest the policy money and pay the monthly mortgage from the returns. You might even have some returns left over for expenses. And when the mortgage is paid off you still have the lump sum left with you. Speak to a financial advisor who can explain these things to you. There is no reason you need to worry about money once you have even 1 policy money with you.

Life insurance usually pays out really pretty quickly, and, so long as your policy is written in trust, is considered outside the estate for probate/IHT purposes.

Having been executer for a good few wills, I would always encourage anyone to make a will, no matter how simple their estate.

Having a valid will is one thing everyone can do to make life as easy as possible, from an admin point of view, at what is bound to be a time of heightened emotions.

I would encourage you to start with a phone appointment with a will writer. We used MN's own @mumblechum0 who were really very helpful indeed and very good value, too, link below

https://www.marlowwills.co.uk

If your DH is not swayed by arguments to make things easier for those left behind, we'll, then I'd agree with PP that there is something else going on here. Please don't ignore it, but put simple steps like will and POA in place and then relax and enjoy your family life. Good luck

Also make sure that you and the children are named as beneficiaries on any of his pension assets, and vice versa if you have any private pension provision. This will ensure that the process of accessing these funds is quicker and having the children named also allows greater flexibility in terms of how they could access the monies in future if required.

With regard to adding your name to his account, to create a joint account - go to the bank yourself and get the relevant form (or download it, if it's available), complete all of the details that you can, then shove it in front of his face, put a pen in his hands and ask him very nicely to sign the goddamn form . Job done.

*CoffeeBeansGalore

Can you set up a separate joint savings account which he can put money into each month & build it up to at least 3 months worth of bills & expenses? Once you are back at work you could also contribute. Preferably just keep saving on the understanding it is only accessed in the event of death or serious injury for either of you. Call it a long term emergency fund. It's a bit more peace of mind for you knowing there is a lump sum you can access.

This is a good idea, thanks. I will mention the idea but I suspect the money would have to come out of what he gives me (and I don’t get enough to be able to save).*

Why should this be the case? I can see why you'd have separate finances when you're both working but as a SAHM you are working on the home, why should you not have equal access to family rainy day savings?

What happened to your savings from when you were working?

@titchy

Forget the £270k rule. His death in service benefit sits outside of this. It's not part of his estate. If you're nominated, you'll get the lot. Probably plus a small spouses pension.

His estate is his share of the house if you own as tenants in common plus savings etc. If you own the house as joint tenants then like the life insurance, the house passes straight to you and sits outside his estate.

If he has savings / assets (car, jewellery etc) of over £270k then it gets distributed as per the intestacy rules.

Having a will makes life a bit easier administratively, but not having one doesn't make things financially harder than they otherwise would be - you'd still be sensible to have access to two or three months of his salary in savings to tide you over till the life insurance and possible pension paid out.

Thank you very much, that’s great.

We’re joint tenants.

In this case I don’t really need to worry about interstacy as outside of life insurance and his death in service benefit he doesn’t have much.

@TheNatureOfTheCatastrophe

While it's a very good thing to have a will for admin reasons, and to know what your access to immediate cash would be in the event of your husband's death, I don't think you need to be too terrified of the intestacy situation.

His half of the house goes to you automatically.
Life insurance to pay off the mortgage goes to you automatically.
Death in service benefit goes to you automatically.
The contents of the joint bills account goes to you automatically - I know you said that's not much.
Any benefit related to a pension plan would go to you automatically.
Government Bereavement allowance goes to you automatically.

Then you look at what's left, which would normally be his personal possessions, his current account and his savings account. If those items, and only those items, are less than 270,000 then it all goes to you. If it's more than that, then the excess is split between you and the children. So if he had £300,000 in savings, or maybe a holiday home in his name only, then you'd get 270,000, plus half of £30,000 ie £285,000, and the children would get £15,000 between them.

Thank you very much. Yes, I’m realising now that I don’t really need to worry about interstacy as he has very little outside of those things.

The life insurance site was just a little unclear as it mentioned that insterstacy could apply without a will and says somewhere that the lump sum is paid to the executor of the will. I’m now presuming this must mean if no beneficiary is named. There’s so much information to take in, some seemingly contradictory to me as a lay person.

@TeenTitan007

Unless your husbands life policy is linked to your mortgage you don't need to pay off the mortgage with it. You can choose to keep the money and keep paying the mortgage until you figure out your monthly income/cash and whether/how much if the mortgage you wish to pay off.

Financially it would be more beneficial to invest the policy money and pay the monthly mortgage from the returns. You might even have some returns left over for expenses. And when the mortgage is paid off you still have the lump sum left with you. Speak to a financial advisor who can explain these things to you. There is no reason you need to worry about money once you have even 1 policy money with you.

No it’s isnt linked to the mortgage, so this is a good point. I guess that was my first thought for security purposes, but that’s something else to consider - thank you.

@FinallyHere

Life insurance usually pays out really pretty quickly, and, so long as your policy is written in trust, is considered outside the estate for probate/IHT purposes.

Having been executer for a good few wills, I would always encourage anyone to make a will, no matter how simple their estate.

Having a valid will is one thing everyone can do to make life as easy as possible, from an admin point of view, at what is bound to be a time of heightened emotions.

I would encourage you to start with a phone appointment with a will writer. We used MN's own @mumblechum0 who were really very helpful indeed and very good value, too, link below

[[https://www.marlowwills.co.uk]]

If your DH is not swayed by arguments to make things easier for those left behind, we'll, then I'd agree with PP that there is something else going on here. Please don't ignore it, but put simple steps like will and POA in place and then relax and enjoy your family life. Good luck

Thank you very much.

@Fiftyplanner

Also make sure that you and the children are named as beneficiaries on any of his pension assets, and vice versa if you have any private pension provision. This will ensure that the process of accessing these funds is quicker and having the children named also allows greater flexibility in terms of how they could access the monies in future if required.

Good point - thanks. I think I am but I will double check this.

@Herecomesspring1

With regard to adding your name to his account, to create a joint account - go to the bank yourself and get the relevant form (or download it, if it's available), complete all of the details that you can, then shove it in front of his face, put a pen in his hands and ask him very nicely to sign the goddamn form . Job done.

I think this is what it will take!

@Palavah

*CoffeeBeansGalore

Can you set up a separate joint savings account which he can put money into each month & build it up to at least 3 months worth of bills & expenses? Once you are back at work you could also contribute. Preferably just keep saving on the understanding it is only accessed in the event of death or serious injury for either of you. Call it a long term emergency fund. It's a bit more peace of mind for you knowing there is a lump sum you can access.

This is a good idea, thanks. I will mention the idea but I suspect the money would have to come out of what he gives me (and I don’t get enough to be able to save).*

Why should this be the case? I can see why you'd have separate finances when you're both working but as a SAHM you are working on the home, why should you not have equal access to family rainy day savings?

What happened to your savings from when you were working?

I had a low paid job so I never really saved a significant amount. Savings were for particular things like house deposit, and just before I finished work I saved up to buy baby stuff and for maternity leave.

Sadly my DH died and without a will.

Life insurance and death in service were not part of the estate, they never are and so came straight to me, no hassle at all, I had the money from both within two weeks of him dying.

House jointly owned so passed to me,

The bank signed over our joint accounts to me.

His personal possessions became mine.

Our solicitor advised us to have my name on all accounts so the accounts wouldn't be frozen if DH died. It was a quick meeting with the bank to go through things before they put my name on his account snd issued me with a card for that account. I've not used it as we have a joint housekeeping account which he transfers money to each month and a mortgage account with enough in to cover the mortgage for a period but like you I was worried that I'd only be able to keep things going on a day to day basis for a couple of months if he suddenly passed away.

@WaterBottle123

Sadly my DH died and without a will.

Life insurance and death in service were not part of the estate, they never are and so came straight to me, no hassle at all, I had the money from both within two weeks of him dying.

House jointly owned so passed to me,

The bank signed over our joint accounts to me.

His personal possessions became mine.

I’m so sorry for your loss

Thank you for this.

@Twinkie01

Our solicitor advised us to have my name on all accounts so the accounts wouldn't be frozen if DH died. It was a quick meeting with the bank to go through things before they put my name on his account snd issued me with a card for that account. I've not used it as we have a joint housekeeping account which he transfers money to each month and a mortgage account with enough in to cover the mortgage for a period but like you I was worried that I'd only be able to keep things going on a day to day basis for a couple of months if he suddenly passed away.

Thank you. Yes, I wouldn’t use it, I’d want to carry on as we are, but it would make things much easier if something happened to him.

I’ve mentioned it again and he made a joke about me running away with ‘his’ money

He has got his copy of the life insurance documents out to check if it’s been set up ‘in trust’ (thanks to those who have mentioned this as I had no idea about it), and not only can he find mention of that, but there’s nothing showing that I’m the named beneficiary! It was set up after we had our first child and he swears he set it up as that but there’s no paperwork to show this. He has said he’ll call to check and sort it out if need be but when this will happen is another matter...

We've just gone through this with my FILs estate. DH only child so no next of kin issues but it still took almost 18 months to sort as no will. Life insurance was paid straight away as outside the estate but as we're in Scotland you have to apply to court to administer the will which took a while and also incurred a fee. We were advised not to spend any money from FIL/DH joint account as FIL paid all the money in so it's still his money, there's no automatic right to it to the joint person on the account. We did spend some on funeral costs because we knew DH was only beneficiary but if there are others that could have a claim to your husbands estate then that could be an issue. Based on the experience my advice to everyone is GET A WILL!

Why would he want to put his wife through the stress of no will? I’d be furious and argue about it until he gets it sorted.
But then again, I would be furious if he kept me with no money while looking after his children.
No idea why he gets to keep the savings etc to himself.

I meant he can find no mention of it being ‘in trust’.

@PetticoatSoldier

We've just gone through this with my FILs estate. DH only child so no next of kin issues but it still took almost 18 months to sort as no will. Life insurance was paid straight away as outside the estate but as we're in Scotland you have to apply to court to administer the will which took a while and also incurred a fee. We were advised not to spend any money from FIL/DH joint account as FIL paid all the money in so it's still his money, there's no automatic right to it to the joint person on the account. We did spend some on funeral costs because we knew DH was only beneficiary but if there are others that could have a claim to your husbands estate then that could be an issue. Based on the experience my advice to everyone is GET A WILL!

Sorry for your loss.

Thank you! I’m very surprised at that with him being joint on the account!

@DGFB

Why would he want to put his wife through the stress of no will? I’d be furious and argue about it until he gets it sorted. But then again, I would be furious if he kept me with no money while looking after his children. No idea why he gets to keep the savings etc to himself.

This is what I don’t get. He knows I’ve been worrying about it. Though I think because he doesn’t worry about anything he doesn’t understand what the worrying feels like for me.

He doesn’t have a massive amount of savings. A bit for emergencies, and to save up for things like holidays as far as I know.

This is what I don’t get. He knows I’ve been worrying about it. Though I think because he doesn’t worry about anything he doesn’t understand what the worrying feels like for me.

Then he’s being a dick. Make him understand! Get cross, cry, whatever it takes.

He doesn’t have a massive amount of savings. A bit for emergencies, and to save up for things like holidays as far as I know.

And he can add your name to those accounts and then you’ll be sorted.

I’d be tearing him a new one over the ‘his money’ thing.

You really need to know how much he earns, how much you can save as a family, all that. And there’s absolutely NO reason, if he’s above board and not spending more on himself than he’s sharing with you and DC, that he shouldn’t tell you/show you.

At the very least you should have.

1. A will each for financial reasons but that also defines what/who gets care of your DC otherwise they might end up in care.
2. Access to sufficient funds for a few months expenses. Joint account or separate account.
3. Life insurance with clearly defined benificaries. In trust to avoid IHT if thresholds or circumstances change.

As someone who saw a dear friend die at 24yr ( very fit and healthy) with a new wife who gave birth 1week after his death I cannot tell you how important life insurance is and how it makes the bumpy road after a parents death a little more bearable.

I agree. Thank you both.