Dear LPG, 

I found an article that I read last March on the LPG website (►►►).  I read it last year and it struck me that QK and I had something in common, and when I came across it again this year, it reminded me that I still do.   Then I browsed a little and found a statistic which informed that 31 million UK adults don’t have a will in place, and when I looked a little more into the smaller print it informs me that a lot of those people are over the age of 65 (like me).  I think that the headline caught my eye because, for all my promises to myself last year, I am still helping to make that statistic true.

Every year when March comes around I do a lot of thinking about getting it done, but I am still no further along… well that is not altogether true because I have had a bit of a think about what I would put in it.    March is called Free Will Month, but so far thinking is all I have achieved. 

It’s not the cost, you can get it sorted out quite cheaply these days and there are quite a few truly free options, but the idea of this Free Will Month is that you can leave a gift to charity which gets paid out after you have passed making it free for now.  

I think that it is the thought of thinking that far ahead that puts me off, but it is really something we all need to do.  Once you have you can live the rest of your life in the knowledge that you will have some control even when you are gone and then forget it unless your circumstances change.  

I remember promising myself that I would get this done this time last year, but this year has arrived, and my will has not, so now that we can get out and about again I have made an appointment with a solicitor to get it done.

You might think that you don’t have anything to leave but I bet you have.  You can write your own will if you can find a couple of witnesses and an executor and although I think it better to get someone who knows more about the pitfalls to look, looking at a template or two will help prepare you for some of the detail you might like to consider.

I am really doing it this year and I suggest that, if you are a reader who has thought a lot about it but has been procrastinating, it might be a good idea to do more than give it a passing thought this year…

If you do not fall into this category and have already written a will, it is also worth remembering to work out if your circumstances have changed since you last updated it.  

Once you have done it,  we all know that it will be years before it is really needed God willing, so it may well be worth reading a message I read years ago on these LPG pages about one way of making sure that everyone knows where it is stored even if the will writing company or solicitor you made it with goes out of business before you do (►►►).

GD Bellingham

GD shares some templates that might help when thinking about getting started…

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… and stats that got her thinking… 

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