Is your original Will safe?

Many of you will know that I encourage my clients to have their valuable documents (Wills, Letters of Wishes, Lasting Powers of Attorney and other items), stored professionally.

I have no idea if you will die in a house fire, and neither do you.

The problem with keeping your documents at home, is that you simply can’t guarantee that they will be there when you need them. If you’re doing something controversial in your Will, perhaps after your death, the person getting less than they had hoped, may destroy your Will, if they’re able to figure out that with no Will, the Intestacy Rules will provide more to them.

If your home is cleared in a rush and without thought, for whatever reason, again, your Will may be lost.

At JC Independent Wills & Probate, we encourage a bit of forward thinking. If one half of a married couple has already died, we suggest the survivor keeps what we call the Nil Rate Band pack. That is, the Death Certificate, the Will of the person who died, their Grant of Probate if one was obtained or at least a note of their assets and values. We keep it with the Will of the person who is still alive, safe in professional storage.

I don’t ever want a family to feel that my retiring or dying, puts them out. This means I encourage as part of the professional storage facility that I’ve arranged, to have the location of Wills noted on Certainty, the National Will Register, so that a Will really can’t be lost.

If you’ve been thoughtful enough to have a Will in place for a while, ask yourself if you know where the original Will is.

If it can’t be found, you don’t have an original Will, and that wouldn’t do at all.

Jane can be contacted at jane@jcwillsandprobate.co.uk or on 01727 840 240.