A well-prepared Will can be a wonderful gift for your loved ones – saving them additional paperwork, stress and expense after your death. But as a legal and often publicly-available document, after your death, it’s not necessarily the best place to house everything you want to tell your executors – from funeral arrangements to your hopes and fears about dependants’ care.
This is where a Letter of Wishes comes in. It’s a useful way to fill in the gaps of what you want executors, family members, guardians and trustees to know (and do) after your death. It usually sits alongside a Will but is not itself a legally-binding document.
Upsides and downsides
The non-legally binding nature of a Letter of Wishes is both its strength and its weakness.
On the upside, it allows executors and trustees the necessary flexibility to make decisions – being able to adapt to changing circumstances while still understanding your hopes. In addition, it’s a confidential document, allowing you some frankness about any family arrangements, or circumstances, you don’t want to put in your Will.
On the flipside, executors are not bound to follow your wishes if circumstances mean it is no longer appropriate to do so.
Do you need legal advice?
There’s no legal format required for a Letter of Wishes, and it’s something you can write yourself, without needing it to be formally witnessed. However, care is required and a solicitor could provide useful advice on aspects you’ve left out, or – critically - any potential issues. It is strongly recommended that the Letter of Wishes is stored alongside your Will.
What you could cover in a Letter of Wishes
• Preferences for your funeral
• Hopes for your children – from where they will go to school to whether they continue their music lessons
• Plans for other dependants, or even for pets
• Requests to trustees on how a trust fund is invested or used
• Explanations for the thinking behind your Will
• Instructions about your personal effects or small individual items
• Anything else you want executors to know, do or tell people
• Hopes for charitable donations
