Make A Will Month April 2020. Is your will up to date?

Our Inpatients Ward senior staff nurse, Rachel, reminds us why Make a Will Month in April is so important for the hospice and for the people who take the opportunity make their wills.

Wirral Hospice St John’s holds a special place in the hearts of our whole Wirral community as we’ve been delivering our specialist medical and nursing care for over 36 years now.

Our services are completely free of charge to patients with life-limiting illnesses, with support for their loved ones too, although it costs more than £5 million a year to run the hospice with every single donation helping us to provide for people at their time of most need.

One welcome, and greatly appreciated, source of funds is realised each April when we partner with a host of Wirral solicitors to offer people the chance to make a new, or revise their old, Will.

The participating legal firms offer valuable time and waive their fees to ask people to make a kind contribution to the hospice for the Will-writing service, at a significant discount to the normal cost.

So for a suggested donation of £90 for a single Will or £150 for a double Will, which goes directly to your local adult hospice, you can have peace of mind that all of your assets will go exactly where you wish them to when you’re no longer around.

Appointments are available throughout April and fill up really quickly. Early booking is strongly advised and we encourage our supporters to contact the solicitors in March to make their booking. Please quote Wirral Hospice St John’s Make a Will Month when booking your consultation.

Making A Will

You may already have a Will in place but if major changes have happened in your life including marriage, divorce, having children or even the death of a loved one, then it can invalidate some, or all, of a current Will.

Unmarried partners or those who have not registered a civil partnership cannot inherit from each other unless there is a Will in place. People with dependent children are especially encouraged to have an up-to-date Will.

It’s natural for people to believe there’s plenty of time before they have to take this important step, but experience tells us that it’s never too early. If your Will is not officially drawn up then your assets may be subject to processes under the law which may have negative repercussions for loved ones for many years.

For a list of the legal organisations offering the service this April please click here, or see below

Legacies

Please do note that if you further choose to leave something to the hospice, or any other charity, in your will it is totally for your discretion and completely confidential between you and your solicitor.

Legacies have become a significant part of hospice income and, although amounts greatly vary, we are always extremely grateful when people choose to leave any size of gift to us.

Anything that you leave to charity is not counted towards the total taxable value of your estate and if you leave at least 10% of your ‘net estate’ to a charity it can cut inheritance tax from 40% to 36% where that may be applicable.

There are different ways of leaving a gift in your Will;

Residual legacy: A gift of the remainder or share of your estate, after all other gifts are given and debts cleared

Pecuniary legacy: A gift of a fixed sum of money

Specific legacy: A gift of a particular named item such as jewellery, a painting, a car or such like.

In April 2019, around 140 people drew up their Wills raising over £16,000 in deeply appreciated donations, to Wirral Hospice St John’s.

We asked Margie, a hospice supporter who took up an appointment through Make a Will Month about her experience,

“I decided to make my own will last year as part of Make a Will Month. Like many other people I’d been putting it off, but once I made the appointment and received the initial paperwork, including a form to fill in at home, I started to relax. Even though the initial discussions with loved ones seemed hard at first I found the whole process itself really easy. For me I am comfortable that I  have that peace of mind and, because of what I know about the hospice it was great to be able to also know the donation is helping to make a difference”

To find out more information, please get in touch with Julia Evans at Wirral Hospice St John’s in the following ways;

Call: 0151 343 0778 

Email: juliae@wirralhospice.org 

or visit www.wirralhospice.org/makeawillmonth