Our will, our way…

If there’s one thing I hate doing, it’s writing out a will. What do I leave to whom, has that one got more than the others, who gets this because they all want it? And so it goes. Unfortunately, writing a will is one of life’s more unpleasant duties we are compelled to do, and trying to please everyone is even harder. However, we have just finished drafting our wills (the last valid ones being dated 1997), now we just need to wait and receive them via mail, take them to be witnessed and send them back to our Executors, The Public Trustee.

We have had several comments regarding our choice of Executors, but they have always done the right thing by our families in the past, and to be honest, knowing they are a Government agency, I somehow feel more secure, rather than if our wills were kept with a private business. The main comments we received were in relation to the fees/charges which will be deducted from our estate. Okay, I know approximately how much is going to be incurred as their debt, but we don’t have that same amount of money up front to see someone privately, and for us, this is the best we can do.

What prompted us to update our wills is the fact that we are now home owners and this puts a totally different perspective on how you view things. Cars, personal items and household goods are easy enough to distribute amongst those you have chosen to be beneficiaries. However, when it comes to property, that is an entirely different matter. One may want to keep the property, one may want to sell it, someone else may want to use it as an investment. There are lots of options and we certainly don’t wish to have a situation where there will be conflict among our children. So, how did we overcome this dilemma?

We solved this issue by including some very specific clauses in our wills, and I would encourage anyone who finds themselves unsure of how to distribute a property (or anything else you consider to be of great value), to do the same. They are not the sort of clauses where “if you don’t do this, you won’t get that”, they are specifically designed to help with the process of fair and just settlement of our estate. We have done what we thought is right for all those concerned, and I suppose time will tell if we made the right decisions. Pity we won’t be here to know, though.

I’m keen to hear from others in the Starts at Sixty community. How have you approached this situation?