Dear LPG readers, 
 
We all have to do challenging things in life, and having done it myself recently, I have finally done one of the hardest things.  I am talking about making a will.  It is so easy to put it off; statistics show that far too many of us do.  I am a reasonably young pensioner, but we are all told how important it is to get this job done before getting to my age.  I found thinking that far ahead an unpleasant experience, but now that it is done, I can put it behind me and get on with the rest of my life. 

There will be many decisions about what you want to leave and to whom, but one of the most challenging decisions I discovered was finding someone to fulfil your wishes.    

When I was looking for an executer, I looked at the option of getting a solicitor to take on the role, but I don’t have that much in the way of savings, and solicitor fees will only minimise anything left for me to pass on.  When looking at finding someone else to take on the job, I checked with a few websites, and nearly every site I found advised that I should choose someone likely to outlive me and that I could trust. It is not until you try to find someone like that that you realise how difficult it is.  The other thing is that you have to get them to agree to help you that way.

I asked a few of my closest younger friends, and three declined because they felt they would need help getting into the right mind-set after that particular event. Someone has to do it, and having more than one person as a joint executor is best. 

In the end, it was a reasonably easy decision for me. I am not worth much, and what I have will be split equally between my children, so I named the four of them as beneficiaries and executors while adding a substitute with a casting vote just in case they can’t agree.  

Having a backup or two is also good in case one of them beats you in the clog-popping race.  I also found more than one website that suggested merit in having more than one person doing this job.  It explained, the advantages of appointing an odd amount of joint executors and also the pros and cons of  putting a clause in about what happens if the executors disagree naming a person who will have a casting vote to make sure that the process does not come to a standstill.  

But the boot was put on the other foot recently when a friend of my mother’s asked me to be a joint executor.  It is easy to refuse, but if everyone needs one or more executors when making a will, basic math dictates that someone has to do it.   

I think that helping someone too close to you in this way might be hard at a time when you have your grieving to do, but knowing that I will not be trying to do it all alone will make the whole thing easier when the responsibility kicks in and, while I have now accepted the job, I found it easy to shelve thinking about the details.  It is easy to forget everything until you must deal with it. 

But recently, the person I said I would do this for had a health scare, although she is fine now, and while I worried about her health, I suddenly realised that I did not know much about what I had taken on and should take a closer look.  

I have found a few lists of other bits of information that anyone who has said yes to this job should read. I hope that adding a few links below might be worth looking at so that any reader thinking about helping a friend in this way has an idea of what is involved—not so that they will be put off but so that they know where to start.

After reading about it, I think that I may have taken on something even more complex than making a will.  Knowing that I don’t have to do it alone will help, and it is not a job everyone should take on. But if everyone refuses when asked, the law of mathematics will leave everyone having to leave their last wishes in the hands of people who know nothing about them.  

GS, Lewisham.

GS shared some of the information she found. Although a lot of is covered is not  British, many of the problems are the same in any language…

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