Category Archives: Family

Dividing an Estate Without a Will

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Post by Katie Jones

When someone you know dies, such as a family member, it is normal to find yourself experiencing feelings of loss, confusion, and uncertainty. During those difficult times you can find yourself forced to confront demands from all sides as you struggle with legal concerns, family issues, and making all the necessary arrangements. It can quickly start to feel overwhelming and if there is no will, things are only going to become more difficult.

Without a will that outlines how an estate is to be divided, there are legal procedures that will come into play to dictate what is to be done. Not only may the final decision not reflect the way the deceased would have wanted things distributed, but the cost and complexity and time requirements can quickly grow.

With this in mind, here’s a closer look at the rules of intestacy – the rulings that determine who receives what. This should also hopefully encourage you to write a will yourself, to avoid this situation where possible, and ensure your possessions, money and estate are divided as you choose. These are your personal assets, so it’s wise to consider what happens to them after you have died.

A guide to intestacy

The rules of intestacy have been in operation since their implementation in 1925. The rules outline who receives what, and often dictate how much along the way. Whilst the exact amounts vary, depending on the situation and relevant members involved, the rules are nonetheless clear on the order itself.

  • If the deceased died with a married spouse or civil partner, this person receives the estate. Depending on the amount, as well as other factors, this may or may not be all of the estate.
  • Non-married partners are not included by rules of intestacy. Likewise, step-relatives, such as step-children, step-siblings and step-parents, are not considered. For the purposes of intimacy, only registered partners (such as marriage and a civil partnership) and blood relatives are included.
  • Adopted children, including any step-children that have been officially and legally adopted, do count under the rules.
  • The rules themselves follow these ‘classes’ of kin in a very specific order. If there are no living relatives in one class, the next is considered, and so forth.

Personal representative

In a normal situation, where this is a documented will, the Executors, or Personal Representatives, are those chosen or outlined in the will to be given the responsibility. This is given through right of Probate; this can only be given if mentioned in the will.

When there is no will, rules of intestacy looks to next of kin. These aren’t given a right of Probate, but a Letter of Administration will empower them to a similar situation. Since this uses the rules of intestacy, you might not always be notified, especially if you’re a distant relative or hard to track down. As such, if you think you may have a right to the estate, as per intestacy, additional assistance can help you with your options and application.

I Want To Retire!

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Who among us does not long for the day when we will finally quit our job and begin a new life in retirement? All those years of work and toil and scrimping will finally pay off when we begin our second act free to live each day as we choose.

But if we expect to just magically arrive at that picture perfect retirement without planning or preparation, we may be in for a nasty surprise.

A fulfilling retirement does not just happen. Many retirees can experience uncertainty as they deal with the unfamiliar challenges of aging while at the same time attempting to incorporate the many changes that come with a brand new lifestyle.

We can all use a little help to successfully navigate the retirement jungle.

And who better to offer guidance than those who have gone before us into retired living?

My new book I Want To Retire! builds upon the honest, often passionate and always candid thoughts expressed in more than 2000 comments from readers of my retirement blogs. Retirees to be and those currently retired share the realities of retirement. Some are happy with where they are, some are confused, some are angry and many are still searching for the best way to live their own fulfilling retirement.

Most importantly, by having personally traveled this sometimes strange and often confusing path, they are better able to identify those essential considerations that every retiree to be will ultimately need to address. How will we prepare relationships for retirement? How can we face our retirement fears? How will we stay busy and engaged during our retired years? How can we build a custom retirement tailored just for us?

Learn from their experiences, benefit from their acquired wisdom and avoid their mistakes as you ponder for yourself those most essential pieces of the puzzle to prepare your own fulfilling retirement.

I Want To Retire! - Essential Considerations for the Retiree to Be is now available from Amazon.com.

Should we Celebrate or Mourn the Death of the Dining Room?

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Post by Liz Higginbottom

A recent survey by Lloyds TSB found that one fifth of homeowners had reduced the number of rooms in their homes to create a more open plan space. The casualty of this new trend was largely the dedicated dining room.

So should we be celebrating on the sofa or mourning the demise of this once most aspirational of rooms? Let’s look at the causes for the dining room decline, and what this means…

Cause

1. Every day dining en famille is fast becoming a thing of the past. This is due to a combination of factors including both parents working, longer working hours, the boom in after school activities for children and the availability of convenience food.

2. Smaller homes. As the trend for homeownership boomed and land became more and more expensive, houses became smaller. Dining rooms became tiny, box- like, characterless spaces and eventually were often dispensed with altogether.

3. Our requirements changed. Developers increasingly found that downstairs loos, utility rooms and en suite bathrooms all attracted more sales than the traditional dining room.

4. A less formal society. Our grandparents’ generation had very few friends round to their homes for meals. Entertaining among the middle classes only took off in the early sixties. Working women were still a minority and housewives found creative outlets by throwing dinner parties. We entered the era of the prawn cocktail, gammon and pineapple and black forest gateau. Today life is much less prescriptive and we can happily combine semi-formal cooking for friends with impromptu gatherings which might involve eating a takeaway on the sofa or like the prime minister sharing a “kitchen supper”.

Effect

1. People are bound to cite the demise of the dining room as one of the causes of the breakdown of family life. In my experience however houses large enough to have dining rooms tend to also have breakfast bars or kitchen tables which become the default dining options and the dining table gathers dust until the weekend. As this is obviously not the most efficient use of space, perhaps it is better to opt for a pool table, stick a plasma screen on the wall and all play together instead.

2. The disappearance of the dining room is also inevitably going to feature in discussions about the causes of obesity and poor nutrition but we must not over egg the pudding here. People are not getting fatter because of where they eat but because of what they eat.

3. It is probably true that an increase in poor table manners is collateral damage caused by the downfall of the dining room. Any parent knows that it is impossible to enforce traditional table manners when balancing a plate on your knee on the sofa. Those Sunday lunches at the dining table at least gave the opportunity to pass on a useful life skill.

Personally I mourn the demise of the dining room for a totally different reason. I see it as a loss of a creative opportunity. Dining rooms, for all their faults, were at least another canvas. They allowed you to have a sleek modern kitchen yet still house your inherited antiques or indulge your passion for French furniture with no incongruity what so ever.

Open plan living however, will lead us into the temptation of succumbing to bland simple furniture styles; opting for trends which will fit in with our fitted kitchen. If you are up for it, this could be just the moment to take on the ultimate challenge, designing a successful unfitted kitchen.