Wills when step children are involved

[numnum]

Me and my boyfriend are needing to get a will made up.

He has two children from a relationship that stay far away and only come to our house for holidays. We now have children that are in our house all the time.

How do you go about deciding what to divide the house when the step children only come here for holidays.

The reasons I'm wondering as well is my partner bought his grandparents house from his brother who was given the house as a favour when the grandparents were living but in care. Its wasn't anything he was to profit on or sell and the family didn't think otherwise. But he did and we bought it

I'm not wanting anything like this to happen to our children where the step children or even my children could sell the hosue to one another.

Can you get terms written out to what you want? We don't have savings so it would just be the house.

[Zacs-Master]

You need to see a solicitor

[dotty.]

at least once

[hc4361]

Is your boyfriend the father of all the children involved?

Is the house owned by you and your boyfriend?

One way to do it is to state the house be sold and the profits to be divided equally between all children, or in shares you and your boyfriend think right.

[Buenchico]

You can divide the house in whatever way you want in your wills. The whole point of having wills is to do your best to choose who your estate should go to, rather than it being fixed by a set of rules (as would be the case if you didn't leave wills).

However it's worth remembering that your step-children might be able to challenge the will (particularly if your partner died after you) under the terms of the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975:
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1975/63

Chris

[mrs.chappie]

Could step-children challenge the will even if they are grown-up with children of their own?

[woofgang]

the two usual grounds are dependency and the other one where they can show tht they were promised something, they behaved in a way that showed that they relied on that promise and the execution of the will which broke that promise would be to their detriment. There was a son recently who had been promised the farm and then the parents left it to an animal charity. He proved promise, reliance and detriment because he had worked on the farm for little wage because he believed he would inherit it.

[mrs.chappie]

Thanks Woofgang.

[tonywiltshire]

You should both make wills and it is worth while taking advice from a solicitor over your children and step children making your wishes clear in your instructions, if you do not make wills you will be relying upon the law of intestacy, which may not suit your purpose and do remember that any marriage or remarriage will automatically revoke the provisions of any former will.
The most likely potential claimants will be dependants where there will have to be evidence of full or partial maintenance prior to death but your solicitor will deal with this. Many people in the legal profession earn considerable sums of money sorting out DIY wills, do not contribute to this.

[Peter Pedant]

TW gives good advice as ever and you should follow it.

You should both make wills through a solicitor

funnily enough in my family, an heir prevented a sale within the family and insisted on selling on the open market thereby causing another heir to be made homeless. Ho hum, c'est la vie

[joko]

are you suggesting that they dont deserve as much just because they live far away?

,aybe halve the assets an you leave your half to your kids an he leaves his half to all his.

[numnum]

my boyfriend is the father to all children and the house is owned.

i dont think they deserve to be put out of the will just because they live far away but this house we've taken back to the brick and re-built and are planning to be here forever and since we have no savings its not like we can say, since our children grew up in this house we leave that to them and then the other children can get the savings.

We wouldn't want the house to be sold because the whole reason we bought it was to keep it in the family as it was great granny and grandads house.

Or I also wondered if the house was to be sold it would have to be agreed and not to be sold in the way which we have bought it where the brother had no right to sell it.

Also, I wanted to know if there could be terms where if one child was to be very well off and the other on minimum wage that the one who was better off didn't get as much the lower paid child.

In our family theres millionaires with two of my partners siblings and the others are very well off and will inherit a lot. So if any of my children were to be succesful or marry into money and

My mum got a will made up with her partner by a very good firm and on her will he done it right and on his will made a mistake with 5 words which has cost her about £60,000 that she wont get because of this one little mistake. THey contacted the firm and the person has now left. All the lawyers that have looked at it can see the mistake but trying to get it sorted could cost her even more. This is why i'm wanting to get everything the way we want it

[hc4361]

You are making things extremely complicated.
You don't want the house to be sold but you want all the children, in varying degrees.
How would that work if the only asset can't be sold?
Would you expect one child to buy the others out?

Anyhow, putting a clause in that the house cannot be sold is putting a yoke round somebody's neck. You are lumbering your children with a house they may not want,

[joko]

i agree, you're making rather a big stipulation regarding the future which frankly once you're gone its no longer up to you.
they may not want all this hassle, i realsie its your great grandmas house and means somethign to you - but it might just be bricks and mortar to them.

if you give something to someone you must let them then do whatver they choose - as it is, you are organising THEIR future for them.
and as mentioned - how can you leave a house to all those kids - yet none can sell it? what happens then? they all live in it together? only one family can live it - so who chooses that?
if none want to live there, does it just sit empty?
you are setting these kids up for a future of court dates, arguments and fallings out because of your desire to control the future.

my dad did something like this to us - he bought shops when we were little with the intention of us working in them when we were older - and then eventually taking over- basically he mapped out our future for us, with no thought to what we actually might want to do.
he was furious when only only one of the 3 of us wanted to do that, and still even now sees it as an insult because we didnt abide by his plans

he tried to plan our whole lives and was strangely surprised when we didnt want him too...
the point is he thought he was helping us. he was doing a very generous and thoughtful thing, wanting to be sure that we all had jobs and a business in th efuture and had money - which is a great thing for a dad to do, and i am grateful to him for caring and thinking ahead like that ... but even so, my life is my life, it was not what i wanted to do, and if i dont want to work in a shop for the rest of my life then i cant do it just so as my dad isnt upset.

you may think this is helping them but you may just be causing them trouble, which could have them all falling out over it .. same as unevenly splitting the shares based on the wealth of each one - it may help the poorer ones, but may also breed resentment...particularly if the reason why they are poor is due to their own laziness or whatever.