You can't take it with you, but you can ensure who has it

An increasing number of people are needing more complicated Wills, in line with those currently being featured in the BBC 2 programme 'Can’t Take it With You', says Francis Durrant of Barr Ellison Solicitors in Cambridge, making it all the more worrying that 70% of people die without making a Will. 

 

“People wanting to leave money to charity or to leave uneven amounts to different relatives and people who are delaying writing a Will because they undecided how to divide their estate are some of the issues featured in the programme and we ourselves are seeing an increasing number where the Will is not straight forward.

Whatever people have to leave it’s important that they write a Will to ensure their estate is left with the people they want to leave it to and they don’t pay any unnecessary tax.”

Reasons why people are increasingly having more complicated Wills include the increase in couples cohabiting rather than marrying, more complicated trust provisions and more people having second marriages. “It is particularly important for unmarried couples to make Wills because they do not have the protections you automatically receive as a married couple,” says Francis. “Also trust provisions can be put in place that can actually end up saving tax and second or subsequent marriages obviously make Wills a lot more complicated.

People are also concerned about the possible remarriage of a survivor and how that would affect what they leave to loved ones. And even if people believe they have very straight forward requirements, with people living much longer they need to think about protecting funds against the increasing cost of long term care.”

Francis believes that it is often the fact that a Will is likely to be complicated that puts people off taking the plunge: “If people are worried about who should receive what or how they should go about it they should remember that any difficult decisions they have to make are likely to be far easier than leaving family with the stress of them dying intestate.”

 

It’s also important, he says, to remember to keep a Will updated to take into account any changes in beneficiaries’ needs and a person’s financial and personal circumstances. 

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Should young children attend the funeral of a parent?

I copy this excellent article from Jon Henley at the Guardian,please log on the link below to check the many responses:

Should young children go to their parents' funerals? It's a question, thankfully, most of us aren't called on to answer. But if we are, our decision can have a lasting impact.

It has just come up in (of all places) The Archers. In a moving speech, Jill Archer, mother of Elizabeth Pargetter, whose husband Nigel famously died in a recent rooftop fall, explains to her daughter why the Pargetters' 11-year-old twins should go to their father's funeral.

Having lost her father at an early age, she reveals, she was denied "the chance to say goodbye" when her mother died not long afterwards, because at seven, she was thought to have been through enough. But, Jill says: "It made me think people could just disappear, without any explanation – people you loved, and who you thought loved you."

Long afterwards, she continues, "I was a very wary person. I didn't want to be hurt again. But then I met your father. He taught me to love again, so I could start to forgive my mother for leaving me without a word and never coming back."

Research by educationalpsychologist Dr John Holland, a specialist in the field, who describes Jill's story as "totally accurate", bears her out. In a pioneering study of adults who had lost a parent while still at school, none of the 47% who attended the funeral reported any negative experiences. Two-thirds said it was positive or helpful, allowing them to "grasp reality" and "letting them say goodbye".

Of the 53% who did not attend, however – many were forbidden outright, others distracted from going – more than 75% later wished they had. They felt regret, exclusion, anger, hurt, frustration, or a "detachment from reality". Those who were given the choice and decided not to go did not experience the same negative feelings.

"A funeral is a family rite of passage and important in the grieving process," says Holland, author of Understanding Children's Experiences of Parental Bereavement. "Don't force them, but it's important for children to feel involved. The golden rule is to explain what it's about, in terms they can understand – and give them the choice."

There is, he adds, no lower age limit: "A child will always gain something. And you should see the anger of people, 40 or 50 years later, who were banned or tricked into not going."

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2011/jan/16/young-children-at-parents-funeral

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