That’s probably an unfair question.

You may not know the answer.

I have a gut instinct for these things, and if you’re a blended family, where you have your own respective children, or only one of you has children, the chances are, you would benefit from incorporating life interests into your Will.

The idea of a life interest is that you’re giving someone (your spouse or partner) the use of all your assets for their life. It means they can live in the house, enjoy the rent from a buy to let, use the income from your investments, but not dip into the capital from which that income arises.

It also provides protection from things like care home fees, the possibility of the survivor of you marrying someone else (and you’ll remember that marriage cancels Wills) which may disinherit the kids.

There’s a lot more advice involved where the extra protection is clearly something which ought to be built in, or at least considered. Those Wills cost more money. But they may be protecting hundreds of thousands of pounds, depending on the value of your assets.

When clients get life interests built into their Wills, we chat through what the financial resources are, and whether you need to think about holding a bit more cash jointly between you, so that the survivor has free access to that, in addition to their own assets.

It’s a balancing act.

Something else to think about is whether if you have a life interest then assets to children, is your partner the same age as your children? You may think I’m being funny, but some partners are nearer to the children’s age than the partner’s age. In that case, you may want to reconsider the idea of your children receiving assets once someone a similar age to them, dies. Can you give to children outright? Are there enough assets? Often there aren’t.

Please seek specialist advice if you need to bounce ideas around and chat things through, exploring what’s best for you and your blended family.

I am happy to chat through issues with you, just give me a call or send me an email when you are ready. 

Tel. 01727 840 240 Jane@jcwillsandprobate.co.uk