Named as an Executor? You Don’t Have to Do It Alone

April 28th 2026 | wills and probate
Many  people do not understand the importance of the role of an executor before accepting the position. An executor acts as the personal representative of a deceased’s estate. In this role, you will be responsible for locating all the deceased’s assets, identifying and paying their outstanding debts, applying for probate, read more...

Will Marriage Revoke Your Will?

March 6th 2026 | wills and probate
Many individuals will be “surprised” to discover marriage may revoke their Will. This has made me reflect on how many individuals will assume their pre-existing Will is secure, simply because no one has informed them of this. The rule itself is clear in that in law, marriage (or forming a read more...

Can You Change a Will After Someone Has Passed Away?

January 12th 2026 | wills and probate
It is a common misconception that once a person passes away, their Will is set in stone however, the UK law allows for there to be flexibility through a Deed of Variation (sometimes referred to as a Deed of Family Arrangement). Following the death of a loved one, their estate read more...

Estate Planning Trends in 2024 - A Rise in DIY Wills

July 10th 2025 | wills and probate
A recent IRN Legal Report reviewed the purchasing habits of consumers in relation to Will Writing and estate planning services in 2024. The results show some slightly concerning trends, namely that, although the number of people preparing Wills has increased (up to 41% of those surveyed), the number of people read more...

Can an Inheritance Affect Your Benefits?

May 28th 2025 | wills and probate
Receiving an inheritance can have significant consequences for individuals in receipt of state benefits in England and Wales. Indeed, my colleage Ashley has written about this topic previously (see here & here ) as it crops up frequesntly when discussing Wills and Estate Planning.  While inheriting money or assets might read more...

What is Intestacy?

March 27th 2025 | wills and probate
Intestacy occurs when an individual dies without a legally valid Will that dictates the distribution of their assets or property. Situations that lead to intestacy include: the deceased did not make a Will the existing Will was deemed invalid a previously valid Will was later revoked some of the terms read more...

One Mans Recycling is Another Man’s Testamentary Opportunity..

November 15th 2024 | wills and probate
In an interesting ruling earlier this month, the High Court ruled that a man's Will, written on the back of 2 food boxes, was legally valid. This ruling has sparked widespread interest in the formalities surrounding the creation of a Will, especially in cases where unconventional methods are used. The read more...

Top 10 Reasons to Use a Solicitor to Administer an Estate

October 25th 2024 | wills and probate
Administering an estate can be a daunting task, especially during a time of grief. Often families want their loved ones (usually their partner or children) to undertake this task and in many cases that is entirely appropriate. However, there are a number of times that using a professional (whether that read more...

Death Bed Gifts - A Recent Case

July 17th 2024 | wills and probate
A running theme of this blog is the lack of consumer protection when using unregulated legal services providers (see here and here and here ).   We have also previously touched upon an area that I had considered effectively confined to dusty shelves of the academia (Donatio Mortis Causa – see read more...

Do I Have To Leave My Estate To My Children?

May 30th 2024 | wills and probate
Along with no forced heirship in England and Wales (unlike in some other countries such as Spain), the law also states that you have the freedom to do as you please in relation to your assets. This is known as ‘testamentary freedom’. Therefore, the short answer is that there is read more...

Spring Budget Update: Minor Change to Inheritance Tax Payment Rules

April 4th 2024 | wills and probate
Hidden away in the recent 2024 Spring Budget update is a small but interesting change to Inheritance Tax (“IHT”) payment rules, specifically concerning the process of obtaining a 'grant on credit' from HMRC. Effective from April 1, 2024, personal representatives of estates will no longer be required to seek commercial read more...

Do You Pay Inheritance Tax On A Jointly Owned House?

December 12th 2023 | wills and probate
The answer is: maybe. Owning property jointly with someone means that you do not need a grant of probate in order to transfer the title to the survivor when one person dies. This is known as the law of succession, which sets out who inherits property. Jointly owned property (held read more...

Intestacy Stinks

October 9th 2023 | wills and probate
One of my recent blogs linked through to an informative and amusing serious of articles by Judge Gold in the magazine 'This is Money'. I would highly recommend them . When the firm tweeted (X'ed?) that blog, we referred to Judge Gold as our new favourite judge. It was pointed read more...

Do It Yourself? A Tale of Probate & Woe

September 11th 2023 | wills and probate
I recently came across a fantastic series of 3 articles in This is Money, written by retired judge Stephen Gold. M'lud had found himself executing the estate of his late aunt. I would commend them to anyone who wants a concise and honest precis of the kinds of frustrations, delays, read more...

Wills: When Should You Get a Capacity Assessment?

June 19th 2023 | wills and probate
It is important to know that for a will to be valid, the testator, i.e., the person making it must have sufficient mental capacity. “Testamentary capacity” is the legal term used when describing an individual’s legal and mental ability to make or alter a valid will. In the absence of read more...

5 Reasons to Write a Will

March 1st 2023 | wills and probate
A Will is a legal document that outlines how a person's assets should be distributed after their death. Despite its importance, it is estimated that as much as 60% of the population either do not have a Will, or have not reviewed their Will following a major life event (marriage, read more...

The Unsuspecting Executor: The Chain of Representation and What It Means

October 24th 2022 | wills and probate
It is sometimes the case that an executor appointed in a Will dies having obtained the Grant of Representation, but before they have completed the administration of the estate. For the purpose of this article, we will call that executor the ‘representative’. If there are other living representatives, they will read more...

Dealing with Family Estrangements

October 7th 2022 | wills and probate
As Private Client advisers, we are accustomed to dealing both with close knit families looking for the best way to provide for each other, but also with the fall out when a family member becomes estranged.  Recent research in the US  suggests that half of all families experience some form read more...

Probate Frauds

May 10th 2022 | wills and probate
Probate fraud is an age-old issue, but one that is taking a variety of new forms in the digital age. I hope this article will help the unwary executor spot and avoid these traps and also an unwitting beneficiary from falling victim. Types of Frauds Against Beneficiaries It is a read more...

Excepted Estates – New Inheritance Tax Rules

January 14th 2022 | wills and probate
On the 1st January the Inheritance Tax (Delivery of Accounts) (Excepted Estate) (Amendment) Regulation 2021 came into effect.  Those regulations are designed to greatly simplify inheritance tax compliance with HMRC for “Excepted Estates”. It was, and remains, a requirement for all estates in which there is an inheritance tax liability read more...

My dear friend as executor…

December 6th 2021 | wills and probate
A frequently encountered client instruction in private client is the naming of executors and trustees. When writing a Will it is unavoidable, essential information. One problem that pops up however is when a client wants to name their dear friend who is of a similar age. It can be a read more...

Rethinking Patient Consent: Changes to the Mental Health Act

February 8th 2021 | wills and probate
Reforming the Mental Health Act 1983 (“the Act”) On the 13 th January 2021, the UK Government published a White Paper, Reforming the Mental Health Act , which recommends the modernisation and improvement of mental health care across the country. Their proposals to reform the governing legislation have been guided read more...

Succession, Inheritance and Surrogacy: The Issues

November 4th 2020 | wills and probate
Surrogacy is when a person agrees to bear a child for someone else. Although it is legal in the UK, surrogacy arrangements cannot be enforced by the courts and it is illegal to pay the surrogate anything other than their reasonable expenses. This therefore limits the type of surrogacy arrangements read more...

Online Probate Applications Mandatory from Next Month

October 1st 2020 | wills and probate
More news from the ongoing farce that is that probate application process. Subscribers to this venerable blog will be well aware that last year the Government implemented a brand new, all singing, all dancing probate application system. No doubt they were cogniscent of the frankly embarrassing 2 to 4 week read more...

Remote Witnessing of Wills – Goodbye Horse, Hello Stable Door

August 27th 2020 | wills and probate
As anyone who has attempted to complete their Will over the last few months will know, the process of attestation has been a veritable pain in the proverbial. Wills Act 1837 Attestation in the case of Wills simply means signing. However the formalities for this process, as laid out in read more...

You Can't Write your Will on Loo Roll

March 19th 2020 | wills and probate
As I am sat here, at home, pondering the meaning of the Universe and trying to remember what the world looked like pre-Coronavirus (ah, halcyon days), I am moved to comment on our fascination with loo rolls.  I understand that the reason we started panic buying loo rolls has something read more...

Probate Delays - Update

January 2nd 2020 | wills and probate
As any keen reader of our blog will have noted by now, there has been an ongoing debacle at the Probate Registries (part of Her Majesty's Courts and Tribunals Service), which has resulted in substantial delays in issuing Grants of Probate. Perhaps mindful of the season, in November HMCTS announced read more...

The Horror of Homemade Wills

October 31st 2019 | wills and probate
I have been seeing more and more homemade Wills in recent years. I will freely admit that, as a Probate Solicitor, these fill me with dread. This is because homemade Wills usually lack useful administrative provisions, or worse, contain clauses which are unworkable or open to challenge. I would never read more...

Probate Fee U-Turn

October 14th 2019 | wills and probate
I am delighted to report that the Government has now announced the formal scrapping of its proposed probate fee hike, or, as they put it:  "We will withdraw these proposals, and keep the current system while we take a closer look at these court fees as part of our annual read more...

Swedish Death Cleaning - All You Need to Know

October 1st 2019 | wills and probate
I have apparently arrived late to the game of Swedish Death Cleaning, a phenomenon which first garnered attention early in 2018 following the release of the book ‘The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning’ by Margareta Magnusson. Everyone who has experienced the loss of a loved one, and especially anyone read more...

Probate Delays

August 22nd 2019 | wills and probate
In an effort to increase efficiency, the probate Courts introduced an all singing, all dancing new system earlier this year.  From a desperately inefficient 2 - 3 week wait for a Grant of Probate, Grants are now being issued in around 3 months..  Sadly, that's not a typo but fear read more...

What Happens If I Do Not Have a Will?

August 21st 2019 | wills and probate
A Will is a document, created by someone during their lifetime, which sets out what they would like to happen to their assets when they die. If you die without a Will, your estate passes under the rules of intestacy. There are several common misconceptions about what happens when someone read more...

The £1 Million Inheritance Tax Threshold - Is it Real?

August 14th 2019 | wills and probate
The concept of inheritance tax is fairly strange to our American cousins. In the UK, when someone dies, any amount in their estate above their available tax-free allowance is charged to tax at 40%. There are some exceptions to this rule, for instance if estates are passing to spouses or read more...

DIY Wills – Great News for Lawyers?!

May 17th 2019 | wills and probate
A good friend of mine recently told me that she was moving home. She saw no point in needlessly lining the coffers of those fat cat lawyers, so was planning on undertaking all of the conveyancing work herself. I wholeheartedly endorsed her savvy approach. Of course, the above is a read more...

Probate Court Fees

May 3rd 2019 | wills and probate
What is going on with Probate Court fees? Anyone with any skin in the game will take a step back at this point, 1,000-yard stare fixed in the distance, and slowly shake their head.  For anyone who has managed to avoid the news for the past 18 months (well done read more...

Another Reason Never to Use Will Writers

April 25th 2019 | wills and probate
I was having Sunday lunch the other day with a relative when they announced that they would like me to witness their Will. Having been in the family now for some seven years I have to say that I was not a little disappointed that we had not been consulted read more...

The Importance of Reviewing your Will (Nil Rate Gifts)

March 19th 2019 | wills and probate
To get the legal jargon out of the way, this article concerns the making of ‘nil rate band gifts’ in Wills and the effect of an available transferable nil rate band on such gifts. In plain English, a nil rate band gift in a Will is, in most cases, the read more...

Dangers of Will Writing Companies

March 13th 2019 | wills and probate
Lawyers are one of those groups of professionals that many of us really want to avoid. Our fear, not always unjustified, is that the visit will be painful. Painful physically (dentists, we’re looking at you) and painful financially. In the world of Private Client, which often involves difficult discussions about read more...

The Wills and Inheritance Quality Scheme

October 4th 2018 | wills and probate
Allan Janes has recently become an accredited member of The Law Society’s Wills and Inheritance Quality Scheme (WIQS). WIQS accredited firms are recognised by the Law Society as providing the highest standards of Will preparation and Estate administration by adhering to the best practice standards laid down by the scheme read more...
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