Published on: 3rd April 2017

How and when to change your Will

Circumstances continually change throughout our lifetimes and it is important to check that your Will continuously reflects your wishes. You may experience a major life event such as marriage, divorce or the death of a relative; in these circumstances it would be beneficial to review your Will and ensure that the life event does not alter the distribution in your Will and that your estate will still be divided according to your wishes.

Getting married could revoke your Will, unless it has been written in contemplation of marriage. Contrastingly, divorce will not revoke your Will, but instead it will read as if your ex-spouse has passed away and therefore any gifts to them will fail. To find out more, please click here. If a beneficiary of your Will has passed away, it would be advantageous to review your Will to ensure their share passes to those who you wish to receive it. Family disputes may also be a reason to review your Will as you may wish for someone to receive a smaller share or place a condition on their share so that they will only be able to receive in a particular circumstance. If a family member, beneficiary or executor changes address after you have created your Will, you do not necessarily have to amend your Will to reflect this. Your Will would still be valid as addresses are identifying factors only. However, our best advice is to update your Will to give the best possible chance of locating that individual. Should you choose not to update your Will, your gifts will not fail but we would kindly ask that you do inform our office of any changes in addresses, so that we can keep your file up to date. Similarly, if a beneficiary was to change their surname through marriage or deed poll this will not cause your Will to be invalid or a gift to fail. The beneficiary will still be identifiable through their original name. But again, we would ask that you inform us of these changes but it would be your choice whether you wish to update your Will or not.

At Casey & Associates we do not create Codicils; a codicil is an additional document which can modify your existing Will. As codicils are a separate document, there is the risk that a codicil may get lost and your estate will then be divided as per your Will resulting in your estate not being distributed according to your wishes. Instead, we create a new Final Will for you; this means that you will have a new Will which includes the amendments and updates allowing for all your wishes to be reflected in one document. If you wish to update your current Will, please click here.

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