Your Will
It is important that you have a Will. You want to ensure that your assets go to the people you intended and that your loved ones are not burdened with unnecessary complications and tax issues.
In making a Will, you will be able to choose the beneficiaries of your estate, ensuring they inherit in an appropriate manner, potentially minimise inheritance tax, select your executors and make appropriate provisions for your children.
Below are the costs to make your Will. Please note that the fees are exclusive of VAT.
Fixed Fee Wills
Where your affairs and wishes are straightforward, we can recommend our fixed fee Will writing service.
We will send a questionnaire for you to complete. We can then arrange a 30 minute consultation, if you want. Once we have reviewed your answers we will draft your Will in accordance with your wishes. After this, we will send you a draft for your approval and make a set of minor amendments before finalising your Will and sending out to you to sign.
The fees for this service are:
- Single Will £450
- Pair of Wills for a couple £600
There may be additional costs if, after receiving your completed questionnaire or our consultation, you need more complex advice or there are substantial changes to made to the draft Will. We would let you know about the fees before incurring costs.
Bespoke service
Where you want a more personal service or dedicated legal advice is required due to your circumstances, our bespoke service would be recommended. This is likely to be appropriate where you want to discuss tax planning, you own assets abroad, have businesses or there are children from previous relationships.
- Single Will from £650
- Pair of Wills for a couple from £850
Your Lasting Powers of Attorney
It is a sad fact of life that illnesses, serious injuries or accidents happen which may leave you unable to make decisions and deal with your affairs. You will want to ensure that your finances can be managed, wellbeing and medical wishes are respected. Lasting Powers of Attorney (“LPA”) are the best way to ensure that key decisions can be made for you, in your best interests.
There are two types of LPA:
- Property and Financial Affairs gives your attorney authority to deal with your property and finances as you specify. You can allow your attorney to have authority to act while you still have capacity. Alternatively you can restrict their authority so they can only act once you have lost capacity. They must abide by any instructions that you provide.
- Health and Welfare allows your attorney to make decisions on your behalf, regarding your health and wellbeing, but only when you lack mental capacity to do so yourself. This extends to giving or refusing consent to the continuation of life sustaining treatment.
For an attorney to use an LPA, it must be registered with the Office of the Public Guardian (“OPG”).
We will send you a questionnaire to complete followed by a 30 minute consultation. Following this, we will arrange for your LPAs to be drawn up and then send you the documents for signing. Once signed by all relevant people, we will then send it to the OPG for registration.
Below are our fees for preparing and registering the LPAs at the OPG. Please note that the fees are exclusive of VAT and do not include the OPG’s registration standard fee which is currently £82 per LPA. Where more detailed legal advice about LPAs is required or specific instructions to be included, there may be additional costs which we would advise you off beforehand.
For one individual
- Preparation and registration of one LPA £450
- Preparation and registration of two LPA £600
For a couple
- Preparation and registration of one LPA each £650
- Preparation and registration of two LPAs each £750
For further advice and assistance please contact Hilesh Chavda, our Head of Private Client.