5 Great Reasons to Attend Our FREE Wills and Estate Planning Seminar
Right Money, Right People, Right Time is our FREE Wills and Estate Planning seminar. We chose that name because we’re passionate about making sure that the right money goes to the right people at the right time in your family.
One of the challenges we have is that most people – and you may be one of them – assume that the right money going to the right people at the right time is the norm. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case.
Why is that? I hear you ask.
Well, as with all things there are a number of reasons but the Big Three are as follows;
- Two thirds of all adults in the UK don’t have a will, according to research reported in The Independent as recently as January 2018.
- Whilst it’s recommended that a will should be updated every five years, a quarter of existing wills haven’t been updated in the last 5 years.
- Many wills have been drafted with little or no professional advice and many families find out the hard way that their loved one’s will didn’t reflect exactly what was expected. Of course, by then it’s too late!
The result of all this is that it’s scary how often the wrong people end up with all the money and the right people end up distraught, as a result.
The most important point to remember, here, is that in every case where things go wrong, it’s the family that are left to pick up the pieces and deal with all the stress, not the person who wrote the will (the Testator).
Our Mission
We’re on a mission to reach as many people as possible to make sure that, at the very least, they’re well-informed when it comes to their own Will and Estate Planning.
We want to get to as many people as possible before things go wrong but the big challenge – and we know this from having to deal with distraught families when things have gone wrong – is that many people habitually ‘put off’ writing or updating their will.
This is why we wanted to share with you the following five great reasons to attend our next Wills and Estate Planning seminar: Right Money, Right People, Right Time, in the hope of encouraging you to come along (full details can be found here). So, here we go!
1 – You Keep Putting it Off and Procrastinating Over the Very Thought of it
There are several reasons why you might be putting off writing or updating your Will but experience has shown that most of the reasons people give us fall under one category. That is: resistance to taking action increases with a lack of clarity.
In short, because you don’t understand all of the implications around writing your Will (it can be incredibly complicated), you keep burying your head in the sand, rather then getting to grips with the issue.
You really don’t want to keep doing that. As we know all too well, stuff happens!
Here are a few examples of what you might not have clarity over;
- Personally, you find it difficult to face your mortality and ask those all-important, yet painful questions about what you want to have happen, when the time comes.
- You may feel some pressure with regard to deciding who will get what in the family.
- Every time you think about it and do a little research or ask a few uncomfortable questions, you just find yourself getting stressed because the whole business seems really confusing.
There are many more reasons that cause people to keep putting off writing or updating their Will and all of them, without exception, are rooted in fear. Usually it’s the highly uncomfortable, way outside of your comfort zone kind of fear, rather than the kind that gives you nightmares, but whatever it is, you mustn’t let that stop you.
In my experience, the only way to overcome fear or discomfort of this kind is to get a lot more clarity over what’s causing you that discomfort, in the first place. That’s why you need to come along to our next seminar (full details here), where I guarantee that you’ll leave with a great deal of clarity and a lot less stress and resistance, as a result.
2 – You’re Worried About Long Term Care and the Prospect of Losing Your Home to Pay for it.
If this one worries you, you’re in good company because there are a great many people concerned over this one. Here are the facts;
- We’re living longer.
- As a result, more and more of us need Long Term Care as we get older.
- Because we live longer we spend more time in Long Term Care.
- When it comes to couples, 1 in 3 households will be affected by Long Term Care.
- It’s now common place for Local Authorities to force people to sell their homes to pay for their care.
The good news is, there are measures you can take to protect your home and your estate – possibly the whole value of it – depending on your personal circumstances. By coming along to our seminar, you’ll have a much better understanding of what you can do, so that you can make concrete plans to protect everything you can.
And remember, if your money ends up going to the Local Authority, it can’t go to the right people at the right time!
Click here for full details of our next seminar.
3 – You’ve Heard of Lasting Power of Attorney’s But Don’t Understand Them
We all live our lives in the belief that ‘it won’t happen to us’ but I think you’ll be surprised to hear that, of the 66,541,700+ people in the UK, more than 2 million of them lack the capacity to make decisions for themselves.
That’s a scary statistic, isn’t it. And that number’s increasing every day.
Another age-related epidemic is that of Alzheimer’s and Dementia. Something that’s growing at an alarming rate and just one of the many situations where Lasting Power of Attorney’s are essential.
In fact, we firmly believe that everyone over the age of 18 should have Lasting Power of Attorneys in place.
This is another area that we’ll be covering in some detail at our seminar (full details here) and it’s another area where you’ll come away with a great deal more clarity.
4 – Inheritance Tax and Your Inheritance Tax Liability
Inheritance tax is affecting an ever-increasing number of people and the amount of inheritance tax being collected by HMRC is growing year on year.
In the 2016/17 tax year, £4.84 billion was collected by HMRC and in the 2014/15 tax year they collected £3.825 Billion. That’s an increase of 26.54% in just two years (check the figures here).
Most people have no idea what their Inheritance Tax liability is and because of that, they have no planning in place to reduce or wipe out that liability.
And yes, there are things you can do to dramatically reduce, if not wipe out any liability altogether. But that requires planning and, if you’re like many of our clients, you have no idea how to go about that without professional support and advice.
This is just another great reason to come along to our Right Money, Right People, Right Time seminar (full details here).
5 – You Simply Don’t Understand the Risks Involved in Putting it Off
As I mentioned earlier, we tend to go through life believing that ‘it won’t happen to us’ but the reality is, life does happen and there’s a good chance that it’s going to happen to us or to someone in our family, at some point.
And there are many things that can ‘happen’ in life that can have an impact on your Will if it’s not been written to take into account every eventuality.
We’ve already mentioned a few things such as Long Term Care, Alzheimer’s and Dementia but did you know that 42% of marriages in the UK end in divorce (see here) and it’s important to understand that both divorce and re-marriage have an impact on an existing Will.
In fact, re-marrying revokes any existing Will ….. and there are a lot of people out there that don’t realise that.
We haven’t mentioned general ill health or premature death but suffice to say, life happens and whilst it’s great to think that these things won’t happen to us, the truth is they may. Our goal – should you decide to join us at our seminar (full details here), is to make sure that your Will delivers the right money to the right people at the right time irrespective of what happens.
Whilst we don’t know if any of the things we’ve discussed here will affect you and your family, we do know that they might happen and we’re able to put the appropriate plans in place, just in case.
Well, that’s five great reasons to join us at our next Wills and Estate Planning seminar. I look forward to meeting you there (just click here for full details and to book your place).
Kindest regards,
Adam Johnson