Indeed. My neighbour/friend was twice married. His 2nd wife was also twice married. Between them they have 3 grown children but none together.
His wife died shortly before Sue, so approx 3 years ago.
He is having a nightmare now trying to sort his will out with complications about legal access to the various bank accounts ie physically he has access but proving it and leaving it His one child and his wife's 2 children is not as straight forward as you might think.
Mine is more straight forward......one marriage, 2 children, everything split equally. And even then there are difficulties as we both left our half of the estate in trust to the 'children' but between them them have requested a change.....but I cant change 50% of it as Sue left it in trust, so i cant touch it.
So I agree, get a good will specialist and think long and hard about the whole thing.
Yep, it's tricky. We're simple folk and don't have complicated affairs but we have three children who we wish to treat equally. One of our sons is Downs and will always be in care of some. We're conscious there is always the risk the state will not provide adequately for his needs.
It took nigh on 30 years to find a solicitor who understood the situation. All the others basically said "I can look this up for you!!!"
Long story short, the solicitor presented our situation to us, gave answers to every question we had and several we hadn't conceived. After about 20 minutes I recall thinking to myself "if this costs £5 - 6000, it will be worth every penny." At the end she said these are your options and this is the cost. The options were £1200, £1500 and £2000. She was brilliant.
On first death a family trust is triggered and 50% of the house goes into the trust. This protects the surviving spouse in the long-term. The rest of the estate goes to the survivor and on second death the estate goes into the family trust. Each son is an equal share beneficiary and my two competent sons are the trustees, meaning our third son is financially secure and his finances managed by his brothers. It's simple but took 30 years to find someone who understood us.