The Gazette 1982

INCORPORATED LAW SOCIETY OF IRELAND

Vol. 76. No.8

October 1982

Where There's a Will . . .

If a person has a particular obligation, such as looking after or maintaining a handicapped child, or aged or infirm relatives, or if there is a problem member of a family who cannot be trusted to manage things wisely, a well drawn will can, in most cases, ensure that, so far as available assets permit, proper provision can be made for the protection of the problem member. In such circumstances an intestacy would be a disaster. In passing, it must be hoped that whatever taxation levels may be imposed on discretionary trusts will not result in their ceasing to be available to cope with the handicapped child or the problem member of the family, or to simplify the difficulty of predicting which of several children is likely to need the greatest share of an estate. People should make wills, not perhaps "early and often", but certainly "early", in the sense of making a will as soon as they marry or acquire sufficient assets to require administration. The purchase of a house, even one mortgaged to the hilt, is obviously an appropriate occasion for the making of a will. Wills should be revised from time to time on a regular basis, as the circumstances of the will maker and the family alter. Even if there are no obvious problems, the parents of young children will avoid considerable difficulty if wills are made. Finally, if any other argument were needed in the cause of will-making, it is cheaper and administra- tively simpler, not perhaps for the will-maker, but certainly for the estate, to have a grant of probate issued rather than a grant of administration intestate. Solicitors' fees for drawing wills have traditionally been very modest — seen as "loss leaders", no doubt — but even in these days of more realistic charging (Continued on P. 176)

\

^ * THEN the Law Society was considering T T following the example of two quite similar countries, Scotland and New Zealand, where campaigns had been mounted by the legal profession to encourage more people to make wills, it was spurred on by statistics for the Republic of Ireland furnished by the Probate Office. The Society was shocked to find that over 42% of grants, for the most recent year for which figures are available, were issued in cases of intestacy. While it might be argued that, in the absence of any requirement to register wills, there may well have been untraced wills in cases where intestate grants were issued, any such un- traced wills may conceiveably have been matched by the number of cases where people died testate but without sufficient assets to require a grant to be taken out. The important feature of the statistic is that, of all cases in which a grant was actually required, 42% were intestacies. 'Y While there may be some people who delay in making wills because they cannot make up their minds on the precise distribution of their assets, this can hardly explain the high percentage of defaulters. The inescapable conclusion is that, for too many • people, the making of one's will involves an element of "signing one's death warrant". It is clearly the duty of the legal profession to disabuse clients of this feeling and to endeavour to ensure that the client looks after his affairs in the best way possible. It cannot be likely that many people would like their assets distributed in exactly the way prescribed by the Succession Act for intestacies. It is certain that few childless couples would be happy to see the "in- laws" get all of one party's assets in the event of the couple dying intestate, one after the other — perhaps as a result of a road accident.

"Make awil week"

isTfth LAWSOCIETY