Will Solicitors

Do you have countless logins or passwords to vital information that would be useful to include as part of your will?

Have you considered your Digital Assets when making a Will?

Our experienced Private Client Solicitors are specialists in Living Wills – sometimes called Advanced Decisions.

The idea behind them is that you are able to specify in advance the extent of medical treatment that you wouldn’t want to be given in the event of suffering a severe medical condition and being unable to give instructions about your care in the future. 

Living Wills can include:

• Whether you would you like to be cared for in a hospice or at home
• How your medical treatment might be affected by beliefs
• Refusal of treatment you don’t want to receive, such as CPR or life support

For a long time it was thought that such living wills had no validity, but in recent years the opinion of the legal and medical profession is that they are valid so long as there is proof that the writer still feels the same way about his or her care at the time when he or she becomes ill. 

When a person dies without leaving a valid will, their property (the estate) must be shared out according to certain rules. These are called the rules of intestacy. 

Our Intestacy Rules Flowchart will help you to understand what will happen to your assets if you die without having a valid Will.

Whether you are an individual beneficiary, a trustee, an executor or an administrator, whether you are a claimant or defendant, we have experience in acting for you. Our Dispute Resolution team can advise you.

Being an Executor is an important role both for ensuring that the wishes of the person who died are carried out but also for ensuring that all the administration associated with dealing with someone’s estate is correctly managed. It is a job that is often given to close family and friends who may also be significant beneficiaries as well. It is precisely because of these things that problems can occur. 

For further info on removing an Executor from post, download our pdf ‘Removing an executor from a will – can you / should you?‘.

If you think you may have a claim because you have not been included in a will or not sufficiently included, click here.

When you need urgent action we are quick and decisive. Where more strategic input is required, we will offer you pragmatic thoughtful solutions to avoid a dispute or mitigate risk with advice that is clear, concise and cost effective. Whether you are an individual beneficiary, a trustee, an executor or an administrator, whether you are a claimant or defendant, we have experience in acting for you. Our Dispute Resolution team can advise you.

Maybe you think you have grounds to challenge a Will, inheritance or have not been provided for? We have created a brief explanation of who may claim, on what basis, and for how much award when they have been left out of a will in our article ‘Unfairly left out of a Will?‘. 

In most cases where a dispute over a Will occurs (typically between family members) it is best to seek to resolve any disputes amicably. Where this is not possible then court action might be the only alternative, but it comes at a cost both personally and financially.

> MORE INFO: How much will it cost to challenge a will?