Getting married cancels any will made before it, unless that will was written with the marriage in mind. The rule surprises plenty of Bristol couples marrying for a second time in their fifties and sixties, and a will solicitor in Bristol raises it in the first ten minutes, along with the harder question of what a new spouse and the children of a first marriage should each take from a house in Henleaze or Westbury-on-Trym that one of them bought long before they met.
Blended families drive much of the city's will work: life interest trusts that let a partner stay in the house before it passes to the children, provision for stepchildren, who take nothing on intestacy, and the position of the many Bristol couples who never married and have no automatic claim on each other's estates. Prices in the better-off parts of the city have pulled quite ordinary estates into inheritance tax, so lifetime gifts, the allowance for a home left to children and legacies to the city's charities are planned at the same time. Owners of the creative and technology businesses Bristol specialises in need business property relief and a succession plan that does not leave a company rudderless.
Lasting powers of attorney, a financial one and a health and welfare one, are prepared alongside and matter more each year as the population ages; without them a family faces a deputyship application to the Court of Protection, which is slower and dearer.
The same solicitors handle probate afterwards: valuing the house and pensions, settling with HMRC, obtaining the grant and distributing. Wills and powers of attorney are nearly always fixed-fee; probate may be fixed, hourly or a percentage of the estate.
Bristol's wills and probate firms are listed below, the verified ones first. Read wills, trusts and probate explained, what a will costs, what a lasting power of attorney is and the general will solicitors page.
