More than half of adults do not have a will in place which could leave their family and loved ones at serious risk if they pass away

Macmillan Cancer Support is urging adults who do not have a will in place to consider urgently writing one, with the charity concerned that many families could be at risk of significant financial and even custody issues.

Research released today shows that changes in family circumstances are most likely to move people to first prepare their will. Whilst having children is the biggest trigger, an additional quarter (26%) cites the death of a parent or getting married as the reason why they first put pen to paper.

But despite that, 57% of adults in the UK have not put pen to paper and worryingly, the research reveals that almost one third (32%) of people aged 56 and over do not have a will.

The research marks the launch of Macmillan Cancer Support’s new Discounted Will-Writing Service which helps people find a legal professional they can trust to write their will at a discounted cost.

Cohabiting couples with and without children is the fastest growing family type, yet people in this situation are most at risk if they don’t make a will as without one, there is no certainty that a partner will inherit.  Furthermore, if a parent of a minor dies where there is no surviving parent or appointed guardian, this could result in the child being taken into care.

In addition, a legacy to a charity is only guaranteed to be gifted if it is included in a valid will.

Please read our exclusive interview on the subject

 

Teekshana Smith is the host for PatientTalk.  She interviews Helen Eddlestone who is legacy manager at MacMillan Cancer Support and Liliana Mahon who is a legal advisor

SMITH Welcome to PatientTalk.  More than half of adults do not have a will in place which could leave their family and loved ones at serious risk if they passed away.  MacMillan Cancer Supporters are urging adults who do not have a will in place to consider urgently writing one.    Hello and welcome.

Ms Eddlestone & Ms Mahon: Hello.

SMITH  So what was the study methodology?

MS EDDLESTONE  At MacMillan Cancer Support we’ve carried out some research which found that 56% of people have not yet written a will which we think is really, really shocking and essentially we want to raise the awareness of how important having a legally valid will really is.

SMITH Were there any surprising results?

MS EDDLESTONE  Well, I think the fact that 56% of people haven’t written a will is quite surprising and we were quite shocked by it.  We also found that 44% of older people have essentially just admitted to putting it off and I think the reason for that is there is a perceived high cost and complication when writing a will and people think it can be quite a stressful experience and also to be brutally honest, people don’t really think about their own death and don’t really thing about planning for it when really they should be because it can leave their families in a real tough time when they are having to grieve anyway and having to sort out the financial situation of their loved one.

SMITH Also with the research, did it show any interesting population segments being uncovered?

MS EDDLESTONE  Well as I’ve already just said we know that quite a lot of older people have admitted to putting off writing their will and I think that was a bit of a shock really because yes, we understand that young people are probably further away from thinking about their own death than older people but we’d hoped that people from an older generation might be more inclined to plan for their future a bit more.  So that was quite a shock that quite a large proportion of older people haven’t thought about it.

SMITH What have you seeing as the prime age of people that were writing a will?

MS EDDLESTONE  Well the single biggest trigger to write a will is having children, which certainly makes sense and Lilana can actually explain what might happen to families if they don’t have a will.

MS MAHON Yes, if you don’t have a will and you’ve got children the children will actually inherit your estate at eighteen where as if you have a will you can actually decide at what age they do inherit whether it be eighteen, twenty-one or twenty-five.  It’s the only real way that you can ensure that the people that you care for and want to inherit from your estate actually do.

SMITH What is the impact of diagnoses with a chronic or terminal medical condition of the decision to make a will?

MS EDDLESTONE  We do actually have some feedback from our research which suggests that 20% of people say an illness is the reason they wrote or would write a will and I think again that goes back to that fact that when people start thinking about their own death and their own mortality they think that they should be writing a will sooner rather than later.

SMITH Helen, Macmillan is well known as a cancer charity.  Why has it decided to go down the services of offering wills?

MS EDDLESTONE  Well we believe that everybody should have an updated, professionally written will, particularly our supporters and people who are affected by cancer.  They are the main reasons why we have designed the new service but saying that, anybody can use the service.  You don’t have to have used MacMillan services to be able to access it and the will writing scheme that we’ve launched is really, really easy to use.  People can do it online, face to face or over the phone and it basically allows them to find a legal professional which they can trust and they can get their will written at a discounted rate which is much cheaper than they can find on the high street.

SMITH Lilana, what is actually a valid will?

MS MAHON There are certain elements for a will to be valid and if you go to a professional they will make ensure that those elements are in place so that your will is valid.  A lot of people make the mistake of thinking they can make their own will at home which of course they don’t have to seek professional advice to make a will but I have seen so many times, time and time again where people have written their own wills at home or they’ve used a kit from a shop to make their wills and they are riddled with problems.  Sometimes they are not dated, sometimes they are not signed properly or they’re not witnessed and it’s really not worth making your own will at home.  I would say seek professional advice and if you use a discounted will writing service you’ll get very good value for money as well.

SMITH Talking about charitable donations in wills are there any tax benefits to doing that?

MS EDDLESTONE  There are indeed.  Gifts left to charities in will are actually exempt for inheritance tax and often people choose to leave a gift in their will to a charity that they care about because it might even take them, that gift might take them underneath the inheritance tax threshold which you have to then pay inheritance tax on your estate.  It can be quite complicated so we advise people seek professional finance advice when doing this but the short story is that a gift to a charity in a will is exempt from inheritance tax.  Our discounted will writing service is available for anybody in England, Scotland and Wales.  We are looking to add people in Northern Ireland as well and we are currently looking for a solicitor partner to partner with to allow that to happen.  So if people want further information about how to access the service just visit our website which is www.macmillan.org.uk/willwriting

SMITH Thank you so much for joining me today.

MS EDDLESTONE & MS MAHON Thank you.

SMITH Thank you for listening to PatientTalk.