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When organising your estate and affairs, you will have some big decisions to make, such as what to include in your Will, who will benefit from your estate and who to appoint as your estate’s executors.
This is where a letter of wishes can be valuable because this allows you to explain your decisions in your own words to help family and friends understand and ultimately respect your choices.
While they aren’t legally binding and are optional, they go hand in hand with your Will and allow you to express your thoughts, feelings and offer guidance to executors.
As the letter of wishes links with your Will, you can offer support to key figures within your estate, like executors and trustees.
Providing guidance on how you want assets like money distributed will make the process much easier for your executors to handle.
If you have included trusts within your Will, the letter of wishes allows you to explain how you want the trustee to manage your trust and when the right time is to share the assets with your beneficiaries.
As well as supporting executors and trustees, the letter of wishes gives you the opportunity to explain certain decisions you have made within your Will.
You can share your honest thoughts and feelings on why certain beneficiaries received particular assets and why you have chosen certain individuals to have a role like executor and trustee.
You may also want to express your reasons for excluding someone from your Will. It isn’t easy to leave a person out, but if this does happen, explaining your reasons can reduce the risk of your Will being challenged in the future.
If you haven’t already expressed to your family the type of funeral you want, a letter of wishes is a great way to do so.
Naturally, those kinds of conversations can be difficult, so having the option to include funeral details in a letter of wishes allows you to share what you want to happen clearly and concisely.
This includes clarifying if you want to be buried or cremated and if there are certain things you want to happen during the service, such as any songs or hymns.
You can write a letter of wishes at any time, but it’s best to write one while you are also writing your Will.
As they need to be kept together, writing them at the same time is the easiest way to do that. If your Will does change at any time, you should update your letter of wishes to reflect those changes.
The letter is a valuable support tool for your family and friends to ensure they can understand your wishes and execute them as you intended.
A letter of wishes should always be signed and dated, but unlike your Will, it doesn’t need witnesses. If you are currently writing your Will and are considering writing a letter of wishes, our team can help.
We can help you assess your Will and discuss with you how a letter of wishes works and what you should be including so that you can support your family.
Our expert team will support you every step of the way, providing comprehensive advice and support so you can make the right decisions to ensure your estate is in order.
For all Will and letter of wishes queries, get in touch with our expert team.
Paralegal – Wills and Powers of Attorney
I started my professional career with Mander Hadley when I joined the firm in March 2021, having completed a Law Degree LLB (Hons) at Birmingham City University.
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