Wills – A Halloween Story, but do you want a happy or sad ending?

Halloween is a time for scary stories and we might have one to tell this year – a tale of two wills. It’s a story where you can decide what happens.  Read on and we’ll ask you to make a choice on what happens next for Jane when something both knowingly inevitable yet always shocking happens.

Jane and Jim

Jane and Jim were a lovely couple, the sort who made others smile when they saw them walking through the park holding hands. They were both artists and while they didn’t make a lot of money, they enjoyed life and made enough to get by.  It helped that Jim had bought the house when he was a teenager, with the mortgage already paid off.  Jim and Jane had lived together for years but had never gotten married and never had kids, but they both doted on Jane’s nephew who lived nearby with his young family.  Jim had one sibling, an older brother who had moved to Birmingham for work, but they fell out years before and he’d already passed away.

A Halloween Tale

Jim died suddenly – he was only sixty four. The doctors gave Jane a form and she knew she had to register the death and organise the funeral, but what about everything else?  Jim had a pension, a bank account, his name was on the council tax bill, he owned the house – there was so much to do and it was overwhelming. Jane registered Jim’s death, on Halloween, and the Registrar was kind and helpful and suggested she find Jim’s Will.

Jane headed home, barely registering the children in costumes in her street knocking on doors and getting lots of sweet treats.  It was Halloween.   She knew Jim kept all of his important paperwork in a drawer in a beautiful rolltop bureau that he loved to use for writing.  Jane opened the drawer…

STOP – what happens next? You decide.  But be warned, one version is more frightening that the other

Story A – Jane finds their Wills

… and lifted out an expandable file folder.  She looked under ‘W’ and there was a copy of both their Wills.

Jane remembered how straightforward the process had been with Wallace Quinn. There’s was a simple Will as they wanted to leave everything to each other if one died first, and when they both died they wanted everything split between charity and Jane’s nephew.  It took one phone call with a solicitor and one short meeting to go through the Will and sign it.  Both Jim and Jane were given copies of their Will, but also decided to have Wallace Quinn store a copy in their fire and flood proof safe.

Jane sighed with relief as, for a moment, she’d wondered what would happen if they hadn’t written Wills.  She shook the thought from her head and headed to bed, knowing she would call Wallace Quinn in the morning and everything would get sorted.

Story B – Jane doesn’t find any Wills

… and couldn’t believe the mess of papers. She lifted out handfuls of old credit card statements and car insurance policies years out of date.  But there was no Will.

The next few months were a nightmare. Because she wasn’t married to Jim, she had no automatic entitlement to anything from Jim’s estate.  Neither was she entitled to deal with Jim’s estate; instead, his nephew from Birmingham was appointed to deal with everything.  Jim didn’t have enough assets to cover all of the unavoidable legal and court costs and the house had to be sold to pay for everything. Jane had to raise a court action to argue for a share and the Sheriff awarded her one third of the estate, but Jim’s niece and nephew received everything else.

Thankfully, Jane’s nephew had a spare room and Jane moved in while trying to work out how to move on with her life.

What version would you want for your partner? 

Too many adults across the country don’t have a will. Each of them is risking the law deciding on what happens to their assets after death rather than someone who knows them.  It is a difficult thing to engage with the idea of dying, but it is inevitable and will happen to all of us.  Writing a Will is not difficult, it is not time consuming and is not expensive. But it is one of the most important documents your family will ever need.  If you don’t have a will, don’t put it off any longer.  Fill in the form on this page and one of our team will be in touch. Read more about our Wills service here.