We often get clients ask us why we give them and explain our ‘Terms of Business’ letter.

Put simply, it shows our professional service in detail; it shows our promises to our clients.

The letter shows exactly how the LSUK service operates. It also states what LSUK expects from its clients as well as the process is a two way discussion.

LSUK will ask clients to read and understand the letter before any business is conducted.

The letter covers the following:

Procedures:

This explains the number of appointments and what’ll happen at each one. It also informs about the company’s Professional Indemnity and Public Liability insurances.

Disclosure of information and confidentiality:

Clients must provide LSUK with all information required so the necessary legal documents can be drafted correctly and accurately; relevant for the individual client. All information the client passes over will remain confidential. The Data Protection Act and its formalities gets its mention here.

Timescales:

LUSK will let the client know how long each procedure will take and when the client will have received finished documents.

Fees and payments:

The client will always know the fees involved before any work begins. This section explains when and how payment is made.

Complaints:

While LSUK don’t get any (well, once in blue moon) it’s good to know that a plan is in place to deal with any complaint, a client may have. A formal procedure exists, and all LSUK staff knows it in minute detail, so the client can gain resolution quickly and efficiently. This includes details of the professional body, to which LSUK belongs, should the client not agree with LSUK.

A final thought; the client will always retain a copy of the Terms of Business so they can refer to it at any stage of the process.

It’s there to help the client understand how LSUK operates and judging by the way business is conducted, it must be working!

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Please take a moment to reflect on those who we lost during 2008. Closer to home, spare a bigger moment for those of your family and friends who you’ve lost in 2008. The list below is a few selected people who many of us will have almost known, grown up with or seen in the newspapers over the years. These are the people that remind us of our own mortality.

First and most important, our LSUK colleagues:

• consultant and friend, Sheila Davidson, (wife of consultant Gordon Davidson)
• consultant and friend Barry Proctor

They brought so much fun and enthusiasm to our business, it seems impossible that we won’t be laughing with them at this time of the year.

Some famous people who died in 2008:

Actors:

• Charton Heston
• Heath Ledger
• Isaac Hayes
• Paul Newman
• Richard Widmark
• Roy Scheider

and:

• Jeremy Beadle, comedian
• Authur C Clarke writer
• Michael Crichton, writer
• Singer Mike Smith of the Dave Clark Five
• Eartha Kitt, singer
• Harold Pinter, playwright
• Bo Diddley, guitarist
• Chess player Bobby Fischer
• Explorer Edmund Hillary
• Yves Saint Laurent, fashion designer
• Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, briefly mentor to The Beatles
• Film director Anthony Minghella
• Reg Varney from On the Buses
• Kathy Staff from Last of the Summer Wine
• Pink Floyd’s Rick Wright
• Neil Aspinall, British road manager for The Beatles

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Mike Smith, one of the voices of the sixties, left just £66,000 in his will, following his death earlier this year.As the lead singer of The Dave Clark Five, he was heard by over 100 million people who bought their records. The band had twenty top twenty singles in the UK and America and their songs still get people up and dancing; who can’t remember “Bits and Pieces” “Glad All Over” and “Catch Us If You Can?”

Although the band ended as the DC5 in 1970, they’ve been heard on radios around the world ever since. So much so, that they were inducted into America’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2008 where Tom Hanks introduced them and Joan Jett performed their hits including a rousing performance of “Bits and Pieces” where Tom Hanks reminded America that Mike Smith’s voice was the one we heard when we listened to the band.

Dave Clark was always an astute businessman. He ran the DC5 and employed the performers. The band members were co-writers on some of the songs only. That probably explains why Mike Smith left such a small estate compared to general belief about someone who sells 100 million records.
Mike returned to performing in 2003 (with rare footage on YouTube) after staying away for 25 years. Tragedy hit when his son Jamie died in a diving accident in 2003. Months later Mike Smith broke his neck in a fall at his home in Spain.

He was paralysed from the waist down after the accident and became an inpatient at The Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Aylesbury. He died there on 28th February 2008 aged just 64 following the onset of pneumonia, less than two weeks before being inducted into the Hall of Fame, but at least he did know he was to receive the award.

Mike Smith left £66,000 in his will. He left the residue of his estate to second wife Charlie Smith. He made £40,000 of donations with a legacy of £5,000 going to the National Spinal Injuries Centre. Around £26,000 went to Michael Mahan on condition that he didn’t contest the will.

The will covers only Smith’s UK holdings. His royalties and intellectual property, including those as cowriter for The Dave Clark Five, were left to his cousin Donald Carn.

Sir Lawrence Oliver said “the DC5; they were as well known as the English dictionary.”

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Roy Wood wrote and performed (with his band Wizzard) one of the greatest ever Christmas time songs that first charted way back in 1973. It’s charted several times since and it’s back in at number 31 again this week, mostly due the number of downloads accepted for chart make-up positions these days.

For those of us that know the song inside out (and that’s most of us!) we know what’s comming just as soon as we hear the ‘shop till’ ring at the start. How many of us know the details of that Will we wrote back in 1973 and have we checked it often since then? Is it still up to date?

‘When the snowman brings the snow’
When we reach our winter years, did what we want to happen when we thought about it 34 years ago, still stand up today?

‘When the kids start singing and the band begins to play’
Roy sings, but what will have happened in your lifetime since you wrote the will all those years ago. Will your children still be singing all these years later? Were they even included?

‘I wish it could be christmas every day’
It’s a great sentiment, but as all know we all go through good years and some not so good. We lose family and friends. Have we adjusted our old will to account for those no longer with us?

‘I’ll sign my name in the rooftops in the snow, then he may decide to stay’
Did we manage to get our 1973 will signed and witnessed properly? If we didn’t we’re lucky that we’re still around 34 years later as it wouldn’t have been a valid will and we need to get it signed and witnessed correctly immediately.

‘Let the bells ring out for Christmas’
Christmas comes but once a year, but we should all check our older wills are currently correct. Once a year is the minimum. Do they convey what we’d want today? If not a quick update is required.

Roy will be collecting his pension soon and much of it will be based on the great song from 34 years ago, the consistent royalties from records (remember them?)/CD/DVD sales and from having the song played non-stop on the radio. Don’t wait for the song to be a hit again before you check your will and see if it needs any updates.

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It’s of great value to look over the government’s website for citizen’s rights concerning death. Here’s the link to it:

http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Governmentcitizensandrights/Death/Preparation/DG_10029429

You’ll learn that a person is unable to make a ‘refuse consent to life-sustaining treatment’ decision if he/she is unable to:

a) understand the information relevant to the decision
b) retain that information
c) use or weigh that information as part of the process of making the decision, or
d) communicate the decision (whether by talking, using sign language or any other means).

An advance Statement can deal with your choices in advance.
Your statement could include:

• treatment you would be happy to have, and in what circumstances
• treatment you would want, no matter how ill you are
• treatment you would prefer not to have, and in what circumstances
• someone you would like to be consulted about your treatment at the time a decision needs to be made

It can also include a specific refusal of treatment, which has a different legal status.

Dignity in Dying (previously the Voluntary Euthanasia people) can now be found on the internet at:

http://www.dignityindying.org.uk/

They have lots of information about assisted suicides – but to be clear LSUK are not suggesting assisted suicides should take place. We just provide information for informed people to make their own decisions.

If writing an advance statement, bear in mind that new drugs or treatments may be introduced in the future. So you could, for example, state that you would prefer not to receive certain current treatments, but would allow for new treatments.

You can still make a living will if you’re diagnosed with a mental illness, as long as you can show that you understand the implications of what you’re doing. You need to be competent to make the decision in question, not necessarily to make other decisions.

It’s best to put your wishes in writing and explain:

• why you’ve made your decision about how you do or don’t want to be treated
• what you understand about the treatment you’re agreeing to or refusing
• why you’re making these decisions now

It’s important that your living will is entered into your medical notes so that in an emergency it is found and acted upon. Consider sending a copy to your doctor and to any hospital which is treating you and to your nearest relatives.

Advice from LSUK – keep within the law, do what you have to do; ensure your Power of Attorney and/or Living Will are up to date.

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There has been a number of high profile assisted suicide cases reported in the press recently.

As always in cases like those presented of late, there is no easy way to give a real worthwhile and valuable opinion of what is right and what is not unless you’re in the situation yourself.

The law is still the law and assisted suicide isn’t allowed in the UK. The lawmakers believe that there would be too much assisted suicide help for people who relations want to be rid of, rather than all genuine cases. Whether this is true or not, we might never know.

On the other hand there’s no doubt that some of those cases highlighted recently show people who no longer wish to live in great pain and be a burden on those who care for them.

Assisted suicide is allowed in a few countries, but some who did allow it have now changed back.

For detail of what you can do and where, go here:

http://www.assistedsuicide.org/suicide_laws.html

The law does have some current answers to help you prepare for dealing with long term illness, once you’ve lost your capacity to make your own decisions.

Essentially we have ‘Power of Attorney’ (Welfare version) where you can nominate someone to make decisions for you concerning how you are to be looked after once you are facing a terminal condition, while you are, of course, not able to decide yourself.

Powers of Attorney do have many other uses, health wise and financial, but we’re not looking at those here.

They provide you with the facility to give the decision to refuse consent to life-sustaining treatment to another person or people. However, and this is a most important point; they do not give you the right to an assisted suicide under UK law.

A living will was previously used by people to make that same life-sustaining treatment decision and some people still use them because they don’t need to ask anyone to give their permission or make the decision on behalf of them, if the day should ever arrive.

The differences between a Living Will (often called an Advance Directive or an Advance Statement) and a (Lasting) Power of Attorney (Welfare) is that with the former you’ve made the decision in advance and no-one is in place to change your decision, with the latter you’ve also made your decision in advance, but it’ll be down to your nominated attorney (person, not necessarily a lawyer) to action the document for you and make decisions based upon current law and medical advances available.

More importantly (perhaps) is the fact that Living Wills are not legally valid, although they are acted upon by doctors while LPAs are legally valid.

Living Wills are actioned by you; LPAs need actioning by someone other than you.

Advice from LSUK – keep within the law, do what you have to do; ensure your Power of Attorney and/or Living Will are up to date.

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The launch of Single Parent Month

National organisation, The Society of Will Writers, is launching ‘Single Parent Month’ throughout January 2009. Current research has shown that single parents are one of the most likely groups to not have a Will and The Society are keen to change this with an initiative that will hopefully see more single parents having a Will written and improving this drastic statistic.

The Society and its participating members are offering single parents throughout the UK a chance to have their Will written at a greatly reduced cost in the hope that this will make them think about their children’s future and ensure that, should anything happen to them, their children’s’ welfare is assured and that they would be entrusted to the person that they want to care for them, instead of leaving it to chance.

As parents with young children most of us never think about dying but sadly not all parents live long enough to see their children grow up. For parents, a Will is the single most important thing you can do for your children to ensure that guardianship and trusts are put in place should the unthinkable happen before your child is 18. With members throughout the UK The Society is on hand to answer any questions people may have about making a Will.

The initiative will commence on 1st January 2009 and will cease on 31st January 2009. Throughout this period, members will be offering to write a single parent’s Will for a fixed fee of £35 regardless of circumstances. In this time we hope that the number of people who have made a Will will have risen considerably and that we will be well on the way to ensuring that everyone throughout the UK has a valid Will.

For further information about this initiative, or to find a member in your area, please contact The Society of Will Writers on 0800 838270 or email info@willwriters.com.

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As a member of (probably) the greatest musical group ever, The Beatles, John Lennon will be remembered by many as a world leader of peace.

Born John Winston Lennon on 9th October 1940, he lived just forty years before he was murdered on December 8th, 1980.

What we will never know is what his future held for him? Would he have treated us to another 20+ albums since 1980? Would he have reformed The Beatles with Paul, George and Ringo? Would have he continued his world peace movement and ended up President of The USA? The Americans would have needed to have changed their rules, but would they?

We do know that his wife, Yoko Ono Lennon, has maintained a dignified distance since his death while continuing to ensure we never forget John Lennon. If you’re ever in New York, a visit to his Strawberry Fields in Central Park is a visit with a camera you won’t ever forget.

His Last Will and Testament is also a good read as an insight in the life of the man. It’s available at the link that follows.

http://www.courttv.com/archive/legaldocs/newsmakers/wills/lennon.html

You will see that he inserted a clause, allowable in the US, but not in the UK. Clause number eight says that if anyone objects to their part in the will, then they are cut out entirely.

This wouldn’t be allowed in the UK because some ‘classes’ or ‘groups’ of people have specific rights in the financial settlement of a will. Children under eighteen, for example, cannot be forgotten or written out. You must provide something reasonable for your children (providing you are leaving some assets!). If you kept your spouse and they have no money or assets of their own, you must provide for them, again in a reasonable manner. In both these examples, these ‘classes’ of people could go to court to ask for more if they weren’t in the will, to receive a legacy, and a judge would make a decision, probably in their favour to some extent.

A LSUK professional consultant can guide you against making mistakes in your will writing.

‘Only in America’ is a cliché we often hear.

I prefer ‘Give Peace A Chance’ and ‘War Is Over.’

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A pressing question often asked of the LSUK consultants concerns how a person can continue to live in a property after the owner has deceased. This often relates to a son or daughter or perhaps a brother or sister living with parents or siblings.

If, for example, a son has lived with his parents for a few years and his parents pass away. He may have a problem with finding new accommodation quickly; he may not have the finances available and if the house is sold quickly he may find himself ‘out on the street.’

In this circumstance it may be advantageous for the son to be given time, say one or two years to allow him to either build up finances towards a deposit for his own property or to find the time to find a suitable home to rent and move out, remembering this has happened at a time of great grief after losing his parents.

The way to solve this is through the Will. This involves giving a legacy of the house, usually via a trust, to the intended person or persons with a clause in the will saying that he can stay in the property for the agreed period without any payment (or perhaps for a payment). He’ll be obliged to insure the house correctly and keep it in good repair.

This, of course, only works if the property can be passed on this way in a will and the house isn’t required to be sold immediately for cash for a particular reason, perhaps to clear a tax bill or to pay pecuniary (money) legacy and the property’s funds are required to carry out that task. So this will works best when the property is going to other family members who don’t need to live in it or need to sell it themselves quickly.

The trustees of the house won’t be allowed to sell it without the son’s consent.

There may be an agreement that the son can move to another property under the same terms. If a house of less value is purchased the spare funds will go into the will’s residuary estate.

When the agreed time period is over the son must move out and the property will be passed on to whoever was named in the will. This can be before the time period has been completed if the son wishes to move out earlier.

This form of action often gives peace of mind to the parents if they have a son (in our example) living at home because he almost has to, perhaps for financial reasons. It gives him maybe up to two years to get his situation sorted out.

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Lots of citizens think that Muslim people cannot make a Will as the Fara’id (Islamic inheritance law) already determines the individual shares of the heirs. Some believe that there is no need for a Muslim to make a Will, as the whole thing is determined by Fara’id.

Due to this, many followers of Islam have yet to take benefit of the complete benefits of having a Will and appointing a professional executor to oversee their estates.

The truth is, Muslims can have their own Wills. They are only forbidden from making a Will to change the individual shares of their heirs, which have been set by Fara’id.

A Will can also be made by a Muslim to dispose of up to one third of their assets in ways they favour – from this section, they may make donations to charities, leave to friends or even relatives who will not be their heirs under Fara’id.

Advantages:

On constructing a Will, a Muslim can:

* make gifts to others who are not named as heirs under Fara’id.

* make agreement to meet particular needs for some of the heirs – e.g. name a guardian for any young children to ensure their sustained provision and support

* alleviate the burden of family and friends at such time of grief by appointing the executor to attend to various arrangements relating to the estate administration which may be time overwhelming and traumatic

• Under English law, if you do not leave a valid Will you are said to have died ‘intestate’, and your wealth will be dispersed to certain relatives in fixed shares – which are not the same as those laid down by the Shari‘a – or if there are no such relatives, then it will go to the Crown, that is, the government.

• If both you and your spouse die (and you were married) leaving children under 18 years old, and if there is no valid Will saying who you would like to be the guardian of any minor children who survive you, then they might be taken into care by the Local Authority.

• If you have been married only in agreement with the Shari‘a in the United Kingdom, you will not be regarded as having been legally married for the purposes of English law. This means that if you die without having made a Will, your spouse will be regarded as an ‘unmarried partner’ and would not be allowed to inherit anything from your estate.

• However if you married both under the Shari‘a and under English law at a registry office, and were then subsequently divorced under the Shari‘a but not under English law, then under English law you would still be regarded as ‘married’, and if you then died without having made a Will, your previous spouse would then inherit from your estate even though he or she would no longer be permitted to a fixed share under the Shari‘a. If you were also in the course of being divorced under English law, but the decree absolute had not yet been definite at the time of your death, then again, under English law you would still be seen as legally ‘married’.

• Again, if a Muslim man married a non-Muslim woman both under the Shari‘a and under English law at a registry office, and then he died without leaving a Will, then under English law she would be seen as his married partner and for that reason allowed to a certain share of his property, whereas under the Shari‘a she would not be entitled to a fixed share of his property – although he would have been permitted to make a detailed bequest to her out of a third of his property, provided that it did not exceed the fixed share that she would have received had she been a Muslim.

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