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What can I leave in a Will?

for a Will to be valid in England and Wales it must do two things.

1) Nominate an Executor

2) Leave a gift of Property.

Now in terms of writing your Will Property means any asset you own such as a Bank Account, Insurance Policy, Investment or a House. It is important to note that you can only leave property in your Will that you actually own. This may sound stupid but lets take your House foir example. If you own the house as a Joint Tenant no matter what you write in your Will the gift will fail as the house would automatically pass to the surviving tenant on your death. To clarify this most people when they buy a house with their spouse or partner will own the property as Joint tenants. This means that you both own 100% of the equitable interest in the property and therefore automatically passes to the surviving Joint tenant on death. I will cover the different ways of owning property in another post.

There are three main types of legacies in a Will.

1. Specific items - these physical items. They may have an intrinsic value or just sentimental value. So you may want to leave your Fender Statercaster guitar to your friend who was in a band with you. Women generally leave their jewelery to their daughters. Now to stipulate the actual gift or you can make it generic gift. i.e. You wouldn’t leave your Vauxhall Vectra to your son or daughter as in 20 years time you most probably wouldn’t own a Vauxhall Vectra. But what you could do is leave "Any car I own at the time of my Death" this means that you wouldn’t have to change your Will every time you changed your car.
2. Monetary gifts - these gifts can be a specific value of money i.e. I leave £10,000 to my sister Joan Smith or it could be a Percentage of your estate. i.e. I leave 5% of my estate to each of my grandchildren alive at my death. Also things such as Bank accounts and insurance policies can be left to specific people but you must include the actual bank account details and the Policy numbers to stop any confusion as to which bank account or Policy you meant.
3. Class Gifts - these gifts are that are split between people or classes of people. So you might want to leave a specific sum of money to all your grandchildren. This would be worded something like " I Leave £20,000 divided equally between all my grandchildren alive at my death" or as in the monetary gifts section you could say "I leave 10% of my estate divided equally between all my grandchildren alive at my death"

The first thing that comes out of your estate is your Funeral expense and Testamentayr expenses (probate fees), then any spefic or monetary gifts and what is left is genarlly the bulk of the estate or whats know as the RESIDUE. The residue is then left either to specific people in specific shares or left to a class of people either in specific shares or divided equally. i.e. "I leave the residue of my estate to all my children alive at the time of my death in eqaul shares"

The first thing to do is to make an asset register ( I.e. everything you own) and then decide who you are going to leave it to. There is lots more information to read here

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