Your estate is your legacy after death that your beneficiaries will receive.
What is important to know if you are leaving assets to your family is what you can’t place in your Will and what you, perhaps, shouldn’t include.
What can I not leave in my Will?
Anything that you don’t own or doesn’t belong to you legally cannot be included in your Will.
Certain assets could be excluded from your estate because you don’t own them outright.
For example, if you have a car, an electronic device, or other high-value assets on finance plans, they cannot be left as part of your estate.
They can only be left in your Will once you’ve completed all payments.
In addition to this, if you have a joint tenancy agreement in place within a property, you cannot bequeath your property in your Will to just anyone.
The other tenant on the joint tenancy agreement automatically inherits the property. This generally shouldn’t be an issue unless that joint tenancy agreement is with a former partner or spouse.
Your pensions and any life insurance policies do not need to be included in your Will if you’ve already chosen to nominate a beneficiary via your policy, but it might be worthwhile keeping an easily accessible record of these to reduce the amount of admin for your executors or administrators.
Upon your passing, these should be automatically paid out to that person and do not need to be included in your Will, but in some cases, they may need to be notified for the payment to be made.
You also do not include any conditional gifts. Conditional gifts are something given to beneficiaries upon a certain task being completed, such as marriage or when you have your first child.
So, if, for example, you’ve got a cash sum or gift to leave upon your beneficiary getting married, this would be classed as a conditional gift. It’s best not to include conditional gifts as these can be hard to enforce.
Unsure about what to leave in your Will?
If you have any concerns about leaving certain assets in your Will, you should contact legal experts who can advise and guide you through the Will process and ensure you understand what you can and cannot leave.
At Palmers, our team of experts will help you every step of the way to ensure your Will covers exactly what you want and accounts for all assets you want to leave and, more importantly, can bequeath to your beneficiaries. Need clarity on your Will? Contact our expert team.
