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Most people write a will, tuck it away in a drawer, and never think about it again. That’s understandable – nobody enjoys dwelling on end-of-life planning – but it’s also one of the more common mistakes we see at Family Lawyers Glasgow. Life moves on. You marry, have children, buy a house, lose someone close…

When it comes to writing a will, most people put it off far longer than they mean to. Life gets busy, the subject feels a bit morbid, and there’s a common assumption that a will is something you sort out “later.” The trouble is, later often arrives without warning. A will is one of the…

If you’re married, in a civil partnership, or simply sharing a life with someone, one of the first questions that comes up when you start thinking about wills is whether you should each have your own, or write one together. It sounds like a small decision. It isn’t, really. The choice between single wills and…

If you’ve ever sat down and tried to work out what inheritance tax actually means for your family, you’ll know it isn’t the most straightforward area of law. Clients come to us at Family Lawyers Glasgow with the same question in different words: will making a will actually reduce inheritance tax, or is it just…

Writing a will is one of those jobs that sits on the to-do list for years, then suddenly feels urgent. Most people focus their energy on deciding who gets what. Far fewer stop to think carefully about who will actually make that happen. Choosing an executor is arguably just as important as deciding on your…

Writing a will in Scotland isn’t quite the same process as it is south of the border, and that surprises a lot of people. Scots law has its own rules on inheritance, its own protections for spouses and children, and its own quirks around property and moveable assets. If you’re putting off writing a will…

Nobody likes thinking about their own mortality, and that’s probably why so many of us put off making a will. But if you die without a valid will in Scotland, your estate doesn’t simply pass to whoever you’d have wanted it to. Instead, it’s distributed according to a set of rules known as the law…

If you asked ten people in Glasgow whether they have a will, most would probably admit they’ve been meaning to get round to it. It’s one of those jobs that sits quietly at the bottom of the to-do list, usually because nobody likes thinking about their own mortality, and because “sorting out a will” sounds…

Losing someone close to you is hard enough without a family disagreement breaking out over what happens next. But it does happen, more often than people expect, and when it does, one question tends to come up early: can the estate still be finalised while the dispute is going on, or does everything grind to…

When someone dies in Scotland, most families assume the executor named in the will simply gets on with things. In practice, that isn’t always what happens. An executor might be unwell, living abroad, overwhelmed by grief, or quietly reluctant to take on the responsibility at all. Sometimes there’s more than one executor, and they can’t…

Losing someone close to you is hard enough without having to untangle the legal and financial aspects. Yet almost every family in Scotland ends up asking the same question sooner or later: when will the money actually reach the people who are due to inherit? It’s a fair question, and honestly, one that doesn’t always…

When someone dies, the person left in charge of their affairs – usually a family member named as executor – often has no idea where to start. One of the first questions that comes up, again and again, is whether they need something called confirmation before they can touch a bank account, sell a house,…

When someone dies, their family is often left dealing with grief and paperwork at the same time, and one of the first practical jobs is working out what the estate is actually worth. This matters more than people expect. The total value of the estate determines whether inheritance tax is due, what kind of confirmation…

When someone dies, it’s rarely just the grief that families are left to deal with. There’s a practical side too, and for whoever has been named as executor, that often means untangling exactly what the deceased owed before anything can be handed out to beneficiaries. It’s a question we’re asked constantly at Family Lawyers Glasgow:…

Losing someone close to you is hard enough without having to work out how to wind up an estate in Scotland at the same time. Yet that is exactly the position most executors find themselves in, often within days of a death. This article walks through what’s actually involved – from confirmation through to distributing…

When someone dies, the people left behind are often handed a job they never asked for and never trained for: sorting out the estate. If you’ve been named as an executor, or you’re simply trying to help a grieving family member work out what happens next, one of the first questions that comes up is…

Dealing with a death in Scotland is never straightforward, even when everything on paper looks fairly simple. Somewhere between the funeral, the phone calls to banks, and the quiet moments of grief, someone has to start gathering paperwork. That someone is usually the executor, and in many cases they’ve never done anything like this before….

Losing someone close to you is hard enough without then discovering there’s no will in place to say what should happen to their money, their home, or the things they’ve spent a lifetime gathering. It happens far more often than people expect. In fact, most of the families we speak with at Family Lawyers Glasgow…

When someone dies in Scotland, one of the first questions families ask is a practical one: who actually deals with everything? Who is legally responsible for winding up the estate, sorting the money, paying the debts, and eventually making sure everything goes to the right people? It’s a fair question, and for most people the…

If you’ve recently lost someone close to you, one of the first questions that tends to come up – often within days of the funeral – is how long it will actually take to sort everything out. Wind up an estate in Scotland and, in many cases, you’re looking at somewhere between six months and…

When someone dies, their affairs don’t just come to a natural close on their own. Someone has to step in and deal with the estate – the money, the property, the debts, the paperwork – and bring it all to a proper conclusion. In Scotland, this process is known as winding up an estate, or…