Making a Will (Web Crawl No.1)
November 2002 is, as you may know, Will Aid month. It is therefore an opportune time for those of us yet to make a will to go ahead and do so and for the web review to consider online resources for prospective will makers.
First, to Will Relief Scotland. Will Relief Scotland is a campaign by five well known charities, where solicitors across Scotland will make you up a will for absolutely free in return for a donation to one of the named charities. The suggested donation level is £75 for a couple's will, £50 for an individual and £25 for a codacil to an existing will.
On the Will Aid website, you can make your donation on-line, find out about the campaign and search a clever database, which will locate the nearest participating solicitor. Also, there is a useful guide to making a will which tells the customers all the information they need to get together before visiting the solicitor (advice which could usefully be paraphrased by any solicitor working in this area). There's also a "jargon buster" (always a welcome sight) of legal terms.
The charities include:
Action Aid is one of the UK's largest development agencies. It seeks to work with poor and marginalised people worldwide to eradicate poverty by overcoming the injustice and inequity that cause it. It is also the organisation behind the campaign against food patents (or "biopiracy"), as a part of which Action Aid have applied for a patent on salted chips (sic).
Save the Children works in the UK and across the world. Emergency relief runs alongside long-term development and prevention work to help children, their families and communities to be self-sufficient.
The British Red Cross cares for people in crisis in local communities throughout the British Isles and overseas as part of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. It assists in the aftermath of natural and manmade disasters, and supports the statutory services at the scenes of major emergencies, by providing first aid and welfare services to victims and their families.
An agency of the churches in the UK and Ireland, Christian Aid works wherever need is greatest, irrespective of religion. It supports local organisations, which are best placed to understand local needs, as well as giving help on the ground through 16 overseas offices, it also campaigns to change the rules that keep people poor.
SCIAF supports poor communities overseas, raises awareness of the underlying causes of poverty, and campaigns for a fairer world. It is the overseas relief and development agency of the Catholic Church in Scotland.
Sight Savers International work alongside local organisations and governments to teach basic eye care skills and hygiene to adults and children. They help to fund eye screening camps, operations, treatments, education, surgical training, as well as supporting rehabilitation programmes.
Scot Wills - wills on the web, offers an online will writing service. An online questionnaire is filled out on a secure server and the will is automatically drafted for you, all for the sum of £35. There is also (another) jargon buster and signing instructions. The price is competitive in comparison to usual solicitor's costs, but without individual legal advice, you can get software to write as many wills as you like for a similar cost, or just get a paper fill-in-the-blanks version for a few pounds.
On the Scottish Courts website, you'll find a brilliantly practical, step-by-step guide to getting confirmed as executor for a small estate (under £25,000) - in terms of user friendly online documents, this is second-to-none.
It is said that there are only two certainties in life: death and taxes. Well, inheritance tax (IHT) is where these two meet. For estates valued at over £250,000 (the tax threshold for 2002/03) tax is payable. The only place to go for info and resources is the Inland Revenue's Capital Tax Office website. Literally everything you need to pay inheritance tax (except a quarter of a million pounds!), this site has all the forms and guidance you'll need on IHT and many other related topics. It also has online "grossing up" and "guaranteed annuity" calculators - whatever they might be.
Finally, not exactly of contemporary use, but absolutely fascinating nonetheless, is the website of the Scottish Archive Network (SCAN). A searchable archive of wills and other documents dating from 1500-1875 which is invaluable for any amateur genealogist and also just a darned good surf! It contains transcripts and scanned images of the wills of such famous Scots as Adam Smith, David Livingstone, Robert Burns and Rob Roy MacGregor. Practitioners will be pleased to note that testamentary language has altered little in the past five centuries.
This article was written by Iain Nisbet of
Govan Law Centre.
It is based on an article first published in SCOLAG Legal Journal in November 2002.
Please read our disclaimer.