Wills and estate planning
We look at your will alongside your pensions, nominations and policies, so each passes to the people you mean it to.
We look at your will alongside your pensions, nominations and policies, so each passes to the people you mean it to.
56% of UK adults do not have a will, on the Money and Pensions Service's 2025 count. Without one, the rules of intestacy decide who inherits.
Under those rules an unmarried partner and a step-child receive nothing, and the estate can pass to relatives you had no wish to benefit.
Source: Money and Pensions Service.
An LPA appoints someone to manage your affairs if illness, accident or age means you cannot. There are two kinds: a Property and Financial Affairs LPA covering money, property and financial arrangements, and a Health and Welfare LPA covering decisions such as medical care, life-sustaining treatment or a move into a care home.
You can only appoint an attorney while you still have the mental capacity to do it. Leave it too late and your family has to apply to the Court for a Deputyship Order, which is slow and costly, and bank accounts and jointly held assets can be restricted while it runs.
Make both LPAs at retirement, or sooner.
Your estate is distributed under strict intestacy rules that take no account of your intentions. Unmarried partners typically receive nothing, step-children receive nothing, and assets can pass to relatives you had no wish to benefit.
You can. A badly executed homemade will can lead to contested probate. Common failures are improper witnessing, ambiguous wording, gifts of things that have since been sold, and executors who have died.
Pension expression-of-wish forms, beneficiary nominations and policies written in trust sit outside the will, so they need to point the same way as the will does.
Wills, trusts and probate need a qualified solicitor. We handle the financial side and work alongside your solicitor, or introduce you to Buzz Legal, a separate business, so the legal documents and the plan agree with each other.
After a marriage, a divorce, the birth of a child or grandchild, a death among your beneficiaries or executors, a significant change in assets or a house move. A quick review every five years is sensible even when nothing obvious has changed.
Wills, trusts and probate are provided by qualified legal professionals rather than by Buzz Financial Services. The Financial Conduct Authority does not regulate will writing, trusts or some forms of estate planning.
Independent Financial Adviser
Independent Financial Adviser
Your first call is with an Account Manager and is at no cost to you. Tell us what is on your mind: a pension you have lost track of, a fixed rate ending, a will you keep meaning to write.