A Will is a simple thing
I often get asked do post office Wills work, and people are shocked when I say yes. They rarely hear me say the bit straight afterwards though, cause what I actually say is ‘Yes, and that’s the problem’.
One of my favourite movies of all time is ‘The Castle’, which granted is not a particularly original favourite for a lawyer. In any event, one of the many exchanges in that movie that I still quote to this day goes something like this -
Darryl - Oh this is beautiful darl. What do ya call these things again?
Sal - Rissoles, everyone cooks rissoles darl.
Darryl - Yeah but it’s what you do with them!
Dale - Mum reckons the trick is you don’t use meat, she gets topside and crushes it.
A Will is a simple thing, it is what you do with it them that matters. I could also make a comment about the crushing of topside but for the purposes of this blog, let’s focus on ‘but it’s what you do with them!’
Knowing nothing about ‘Jill Smith’ and her circumstances this document could, in many cases, be a Will. Now ideally the document would have more but again, depending on the circumstances, this could be a Will.
The reason that my response to ‘do post office Wills work’ is ‘Yes, and that’s the problem’ is that I have had to help clients get Probate on some documents that really should not have been Wills. I have also had to assist people with an application in relation to an informal Will document, a document that fails one of the tests but should still qualify as a Will. A Will is a simple thing, death, and grief, and all of the issues that fall outside of your Will, they are the issue.
Problems are then created for the Estate that would not have existed if the Will had been prepared so that it properly related to the actual situation. Some examples of problems I have encountered include -
Inappropriate executor/s - the appointment of an Executor that was always going to fight with one or more beneficiaries, or two Executors who were never going to be able to work well together
Removing definition clauses in situations where it was not obvious who ‘the children’ or ‘my spouse’ were - for instance a couple who have not divorced despite being separated for ten years and each having new partners would now unintentionally gift their estate between their two ‘spouses’ unless they have properly defined that. What if you use the term ‘my spouse’ without naming the person, and another person steps forward and claims to be the mistress of the deceased? In the above example what would happen if one of the three people listed was not in fact her child? What would happen if she had a fourth child who is not listed here? What would happen if all of these children are still under 18 and cannot indeed hold any assets in their own name?
Attempting to gift assets that a Will cannot gift - like gifting one house to one child and another house to another child, but actually one house is held as joint tenants and cannot be gifted. Another example is giving a life estate in a house where the house is the only asset and the Estate had debts (like all Estates, think about funeral expenses for instance) and no money to pay the debts.
If you want to read more about my Estate Planning process and why I get you to do funny things, like create a filing system, then you can read more about that here.
I could go on with many examples that I have seen ‘in real life’, but I will not. Suffice to say that years of helping families with poorly planned Estates has made me passionate about sorting out all of your Estate, not just the piece of paper.
So what should I do?
You need to do a proper Estate Plan, not just a Will but all of it.
I have prepared a spiral bound book for you to go through, a book seemed better for the client than an online course as it seemed easier for you to stop and then pick it up again, write notes or come back to parts that you have skipped. This gives you some homework, like setting up a filing system, and also steps you through some information so that you can give me all the information that I need to help you.
If you want to find out more, either about our cost or about the process then enter your email address below and you will get an automated email with that information.