If you haven't written a Will, you have no say in who receives you estate

​The Cost of Dying Intestate

When Paul Ilett's father died without making a will, he faced problems ranging from a threatened court case to near repossession. This is his cautionary tale
​My Dad passed away in May last year; a clever, funny man who had only just celebrated his 71st birthday. It was a horrible shock for the whole family and, within a couple of days, we were all together at his bungalow in Kent trying to come to terms with the fact that he was gone.
 
Luckily, we are a close family and quickly agreed how we were going to handle his affairs. He had died without a will so we hired a solicitor to sort out probate, and my brother and I were going to act as administrators. We knew we could knock about £6,000 off the legal bill if we contacted all his banks and utility companies ourselves, so I volunteered to do this.
 
And, I must say, the quality of customer service you get when you are newly bereaved is something of a revelation. I bypassed the recorded voices and infuriating phone menus and spoke to real people almost straight away, all of who were falling over themselves to offer condolences and make the process of settling accounts easy and painless. Why can't customer service always be that good?
 
But, as the months went by, much of this gold-standard service lost its shine. Dad's energy company was first to drop the pretence of caring, threatening to go to court so it could forcibly enter his house and install payment meters. This had been automatically triggered by the number of final demands sent to the now empty bungalow. Apparently the firm wasn't able to turn off the demands because they were generated by a central computer, and you know computers, they just won't be told. Exasperated, and genuinely concerned at the possible damage the company might do to Dad's house, I scraped together the money – about £450 – and to our relief the court case was dropped.
 
Within days we had a new demand for more money – an estimated bill for the next three months. This time I lucked upon a customer care adviser who simply switched off the final demands – yes, it can be done. We haven't heard from that company since.
 
Dad's mortgage company, Cheltenham & Gloucester (part of the Lloyds Banking Group), had also been less than helpful. There was an outstanding mortgage of about £90,000, but C&G was clear it would not correspond with me until my brother and I were officially administrators. But there was nothing to stop me phoning C&G. So I called every couple of months to update it on probate and the sale of the bungalow, and it was happy to make notes against the account.
 
However, even when a family agrees what should happen, it seems the legal system cannot move swiftly. We reached the anniversary of Dad's death still without a grant of administration – the legal document required to represent a deceased person who dies without a will and to collect and distribute their assets. I wasn't overly concerned until, out of the blue, a letter arrived from Eversheds. It is an international law firm, although from the wording I initially assumed it was a debt collection agency. I was asked if I was ready to "voluntarily surrender possession" of Dad's house to prevent the commencement of "possession proceedings".
 
Read more of this Horror Story at the Guardian 

Everyone needs to write a Will

F YOU DON'T MAKE A WILL:-
 
First of all, your Estate will cost a lot more and take a lot longer to distribute
 
If you have no spouse or blood relatives, your entire estate will go to the Taxman
 
If you do have blood relatives or a spouse, they will have to apply to the courts to administer your Estate - a far more lengthy and costly process than if you had written a Will - and your Inheritance Tax bill could be higher
 
You forfeit the right to 'ring-fence' some or all of your estate such that your spouse can benefit from it but a Local Authority can (if he/she has to go into long-term care)
 
If you have children under 18, and the other parent is also dead, then you have given up the right to decide who looks after them
 
If you have a partner to whom you are not married, he/she will get nothing from your estate even if you have been together for 50 years or more and even if he/she lives with you: the Intestacy Laws do not recognise unmarried "Common Law" partners
 
The Government effectively writes a Will for you.