Having a guided, multidimensional process that allows you to freely express your last wishes to specific loved ones while maintaining a view of your asset portfolio with enough control to distribute them would be the most ideal scenario. This is why most people a solicitor to help plan their estate, but with social-distancing measures, even obtaining a signature from a witness could be a challenge! That leaves a lot of people with either high barriers of entry or a more likely path to writing a non-legally binding ambiguous will that’s just as good as dying intestate (without a Will).
Without a valid Will, you cannot control who will inherit your property after your death. Should you die intestate your property will be distributed according to law, which is likely to be inconsistent with your personal wishes. In some cases, your estate may go to the Crown instead of the people you want to benefit from it. By making a Will you can determine precisely who will inherit your property and let your loved ones know that you have considered their needs.
You can determine who will administer your estate and who will act as guardian for any minor children you have if they are left without a surviving parent. You can also use your Will to express your preferences for burial or cremation, as provided on Solon. Note that if you do have a specific preference for burial or cremation, it is also sensible that you tell your spouse, executors, family, or friends. Although your Solon-generated will is made available to your chosen executors the moment you fail to check-in through our in-built proof of life mechanism, circumstances may delay access, and the contents of your Will may not typically be known to your executors until after burial or cremation has taken place.
Making a Will also gives you the opportunity of reducing your Inheritance Tax liability and Solon was designed with this in mind – to provide an estimated amount of taxes due on your estate. Our intelligent tax optimisation engine also gives you visibility towards how much tax each beneficiary will be liable for. This is particularly important if you have substantial assets.
When you die leaving a valid Will that appoints one or two executors who are still living at the time of your death, legal ownership of all of your property passes automatically to those executors. In order to prove that they have the right to deal with your property, they must apply for a legal document confirming their right to do so from the Probate Registry – this process is called ‘obtaining probate.