Have you written your will?

She's sort of annoying, but she had a point.

Anyway, so yeah, I did one, she read it and then made me change it. Ahh, mom...

So, in the UK this month is National Will Aid month: http://www.willaid.org.uk/
whereby apparently you can get a solicitor (if there are any signed up in your area, which annoyingly you can't find out without giving the website your full details) to write your will in return for a payment to charity.

I haven't written a will. This Beeb article scared me into reconsidering it, since I'd like my partner not to be kicked out of my flat when I die, but I don't even know what happens to my flat if I die before the mortgage is repaid in approx 6000 years. (I think maybe I am supposed to have life insurance, but I don't.)

Have you written a will? How did you go about it?

Yes. My wife and I have written our wills. But then, I am The Oldest Living ILXor (Non-Lurker Division) so you might think that would account for it. You'd be partly right. There are other factors involved.

My advice for all you ilxors entering their middle years and vaguely thinking a will might be a good idea is simple: think about it, but not for very long. The default distribution of any estate you might leave is going to align with your own wishes about 95% of the time. This means that, for 95% of you, if you die inestate, nothing would get badly out of joint. (NB: Gay couples haven't achieved this legal bliss, yet, sad to say. Soon, we hope.)

If all you want to do is indicate some of your desires, like how your memorial service should go or what to do with your remains, without requiring a legal instrument to enforce them, then all you need to do is take a few hours to think them through and write them out, giving copies to the people who are likely to survive you. Chances are good that any small bequests you make ("give my CD collection to Freddy") would be honored, even though they are unenforceable.

If you have some non-standard ideas of how your assets should be parceled out, and you want them enforced, then a very simple will should be sufficient. A 'Tesco £10.99' Will' may be plenty to cover those few bequests that are out of the strictly ordinary. Complicated wills are mostly for people with complicated responsibilities and complex finances.

Aimless, I think I was too scared of triteness to say anything last time round, but on rereading that thread my hat goes off to you all over again. (There, that was trite.)

Although I am unmarried I trust my parents would treat my partner kindly if they found themselves in legal possession of the flat we live in. The problem I hadn't considered until reading that BBC article is that with no will it might take some time for it to be agreed that everything should go to my parents (even though I have no children, no husband or ex-husbands, no siblings, and therefore it would seem extremely uncomplicated), by which point he would already have been forced out.

Perhaps this is not the case, or perhaps it's unavoidable in any event. I really need to read the fine print of my mortgage. Ho hum.

Anyway, enough of my tedious personal circumstances. Anyone else feel like talking about wills?