December 2020 – Great Expectations

In the end the finale was something of a disappointment.

Fifteen years after my appointment as Executor for the administration of what has felt like a modern-day version of Jarndyce & Jarndyce (the long-running legal dispute in Dickens’ Bleak House), we sat in splendid isolation on a Zoom conference.

We listened to learned gentlemen debate in hushed and terribly polite tones the facts, and conclude that our suggestions for a Variation Order to the Will were acceptable and that having got all 12 adult beneficiaries to agree (plus agreement on behalf of minor and even unborn beneficiaries), the Will Trust could be formed.

July 2005 until October 2020. Let that time period settle in your mind.  Contemplate your expected legal fees – choose the higher number in your mind, multiply it by 15, throw in four barristers and a judge for good measure.  Then add the dreaded land agent and three sets of accountants. Get your inheritance planning right and watertight now to avoid the above.

 

read the full article here…….