Inception is the new film starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Ellen Page and Michael Caine. It starts by telling us about the ways that dreams can be implanted into people so they dream what they’re told to dream about. Whether it’s possible or not isn’t the problem; the difficulty is in the legal services they need to worry about as the film develops.

The father figure of a world corporate organization is dying. His close legal team tell him that now is the time that he should give power of attorney to his advisers so they can run his business while he is ill.

What this means is that by the father’s own signed document, he’d be giving his advisers the power to take decisions that he’d taken before he was ill. It would appear that he didn’t really trust his advisers enough because he wouldn’t sign the document.

That makes a very good point; while it’s very important for someone/people to look after your finances and those of your company while you’re too ill to make decisions, you should never give that power to people you don’t trust 100%. You never know what they might do with your money.

The advisers could have asked the father to provide a power of attorney to continue after he’d passed over to a state where he could no longer make his own judgment calls. Then people would be in place to make those decisions for him until his death.

Secondly, it was revealed later on in the film that a will existed that was ready to be used, but that the son knew of a second, later will that was held in the father’s safe. This gave the son a dilemma that should never happen. He could reads the two wills and see which one suited him best. He would destroy the other one.

That’s why LSUK always suggest that any previous wills are destroyed completely. Then there’s never any doubt which will a client meant to be used. Even though several people could prove that a later will had been drawn up and no doubt copies would be available, it’s only the signed original that counts.

Always take careful advice was professional advisers who can guide you down the correct route for legal documents – and trust them 100% Forunately, we didn’t get to find out which will the son chose!

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After someone dies, their estate needs to be valued. You’ll need to know what their ‘financial’ value was at the time of their death. At the other end of the scale, you’ll also need to know what their debts were. Debts don’t just disappear when someone dies, but if their assets aren’t more than their debts, then those debts may just disappear – but that’s not a reason to own nothing when the time comes!

Knowing the assets and liabilities also lets you know if money is due to the tax office in the shape of inheritance tax.

The easy ones to look over are the bank accounts, national savings accounts and building society accounts. When you get final figures for these accounts you must remember to have interest added to the date of death.

If there’s a joint bank account then the funds in the account pass automatically to the other person, but you’ll still need to assess how much belonged to who.

Life assurance is a tiresome claim, but the figures should be easy to find out; it’s just the time taken to get the funds moved from the life assurance company to the probate account that causes the headaches.

Some insurances get forgotten. For example, if you were away on holiday it may be that the travel insurance will pay out on death.

Stocks and shares, often known as equities, need to be valued at the date of death. Nevertheless, please note that the values of those shares can still go up or down until they’re sold, or they might just be transferred according to probate and the requirements of the will.

Shares in private companies and partnerships are even more difficult to value. The accountants of the business, will probably have to be involved to draw the business’s accounts to date even if it’s not year end.

Pensions need checking to see what value they have on death. Some might still pay out a further lump sum while some end completely on the death of a pension holder. If state pension was being paid to the deceased it often continues getting paid after someone has died and therefore the overlapping funds will need to be repaid.

State benefits need to be balanced to the date of death. For example, child benefit will continue if one parent lives on, but it will end if only one parent was alive.

We haven’t even started on property and farms yet…

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Did your family throw away most of your inheritance by giving it to the government in speeding fines?

New figures show speed cameras earn money for the Government, but do not reduce casualties on the road. Immediately people will agree with this statement because they believed it all along (Canada withdrew them for this very reason and now Swindon has joined that lead), but also many people will believe it’s led to people slowing down and therefore, less deaths on the road. More than likely is that people slow down where they know the camera is and then speed up.

Last year cameras brought in £87million. Imagine for one moment, the cost of putting up and maintaining those cameras. Could that have build a hospital or two; a school or two?

What if you invested the money in education about speeding?

Of course education is the key to getting people to drive at safer speeds. There will be more than one mother who knows that if a child is hit at 30mph the likelihood of a fatal injury is much higher than if they’re hit at 20 mph, hence the lower limits around schools and busy towns.

It’s very difficult for the so called experts to plan our road speeds. We all know that the M1 at 7.30am is very different from the M1 at 4 in the morning. The disparity in weather makes large differences in stopping speeds.

We all know the roads are too busy, especially since freight was taken from the railways and put on large lorries on our motorways. However, the numbers of fatalities hasn’t fallen since cameras were said to be the answer. All they’ve done is alienate the police from the public still further.

We’re not agreeing with speeding; we’re certainly not agreeing with dangerous driving, but this ‘new’ taxation is now so high that authorities will have to find another way to take tax from its local people if they do away with the cameras. Do we accept the expectation of a ticket or three every three years just to avoid other taxes being increased?

If you’ve lost someone to a speeding driver you’ll feel quite strongly about the validity of speed cameras, but losing £300 every year for a number of years can lead to quite a large amount if that same money was invested and earned average interest.

While you’re driving slower, saving on your fines and investing it, did you know that if you save £360 a year (allowing for fines to increase in the future)for 40 years and your investments compound at just 5% a year how much will you have? The answer is an astonishing £48,000 approximately. That’s where your inheritance may have gone – to the local authority in speeding camera taxation.

If you don’t want to know if your county is taking the most money in camera/speeding fines, look away now:

London £6,265,860
Avon and Somerset £3,491,340
Mid and South Wales £2,915,340
Greater Manchester £2,876,280
Thames Valley £2,861,880
West Mercia £2,795,340
Nottinghamshire £2,380,980
Lancashire £2,238,960
Hertfordshire £2,168,280
Northumbria £2,130,000

It was suggested that we shouldn’t mention the one camera that takes in around £1.2 million a year where there’s been one accident in ten years.

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Paul the octopus has retired. There’s always the question of when you should retire, providing health doesn’t stop you from making that choice. It’s how you’ve planned for your time in retirement that really dictates when you can retire.

Paul has been extremely lucky or in some people’s eyes, skillful, recently. He managed to guess the winning team in every game Germany played during the 2010 Football World Cup in South Africa, including the two they lost. He also correctly guessed the final’s winners, Spain. He carried out a similar task during the 2006 finals in Germany and was almost always correct, but he did get one wrong result/prediction, when Germany lost the final.

Now he gets to retire from predicting football results but he will carry on with some work, giving children fun and entertainment where he lives in Germany, having originally been born in Weymouth, England.

Planning ahead is always difficult when you try to balance spending and savings now and for the future.

Take Sir Alex Ferguson for example. Most would say he’s a brilliant football manager, perhaps the greatest ever, but even the great get to make some minor errors in their planning.

Did he realize that Gerard Pique would turn into one of the world’s best defenders when he let him go back to Barcelona? Although Deigo Forlan took 27 games before he scored for Manchester United, he went on to become the best player of this year’s world cup tournament having proven himself as a top goalscorer for Villareal, Athletico Madrid and his country, Uruguay. Should Sir Alex have given Deigo one more season?

Did he think that Carlos Tevez would would go on to score 29 goals for his closest competitor (Manchester City), particularly when United’s goals dried up (and they lost the EPL by one point) and then star in the finals of 2010 in South Africa?

You have to consider all the facts and make your best judgment. Planning to get your wills written and your power of attorney in place doesn’t need to be something you put off. Doing it now ensures that at least that part of your planning is up to date and you are able to update your legal documents when the need arrives.

Then when you keep those documents in safe storage you’ll know there’s professional help available every step of the way.

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Brits now have the opportunity to go online to a special government website and suggest which laws should be changed and which red tape should be finished.

There’s no doubt that the previous government had gone new law ‘crazy’ and introduced ‘red tape’ burdens on both individuals and family. They hid behind the threat or terrorism to change the UK person’s civil liberties forever – or perhaps not?

You can go here http://yourfreedom.hmg.gov.uk to look over the website; add comments to suggestions already there or suggest changes the new government should make.

Do you want to do away with inheritance tax?

Some people have already suggested this already. Go add your comments.

You may feel that the new Lasting Powers of Attorney laws are more cumbersome than the previous Power of Attorney laws. If so, go look here:

http://yourfreedom.hmg.gov.uk/restoring-civil-liberties/lasting-powers-of-attourney

Here’s what the government says (from its website)

We’re working to create a more open and less intrusive society. We want to restore Britain’s traditions of freedom and fairness, and free our society of unnecessary laws and regulations – both for individuals and businesses.

This site gives you the chance to suggest how we can do this. Your ideas will inform government policy and some of your proposals could end up making it into bills we bring before Parliament to change the law.

So if there are any laws or regulations you’d like us to do away with, then first, check if there are any similar ideas here already and then add your comments to it and rate it to move it up the list. If it’s not here, then add it! And remember - we want you to suggest ideas for removing laws and regulations, rather than ideas for creating them.

There’s a good section on Equal tax, legal and benefit treatment for unmarried “couples” where this argument is made:

Where there is no marriage or civil partnership, there are in law no rights of inheritance or under intestacy, no rights of next of kin, no rights of support upon separation and no rights to claim several beneficial tax exemptions or other provisions.

The law must be made equal in all areas. If marriage is to be recognised as having some different and differential effect (a big question in itself) then those who have not married (or civil partnered) should not have to be treated as if they have.

Nevertheless, some sense can be seen about removing VAT where items are compulsory:

Road users are legally required to take out insurance then have to pay a tax on that premium. No tax should be levied on any product or service that is a legal requirement.

Mind you, beware. Some people are taking the occasion to suggest really silly ideas like not having speed limits on our motorways and doing away with all taxation.

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This isn’t anything about life expectancy or knowing you’ve four years to live, although both those comments can raise a full conversation on a regular basis. Life expectancy gets longer, but isn’t relative to any of us because of individual family history, health and fitness. As to knowing how long we have to live, medical experts can tell us two months and some live five years, while others unfortunately, get it the other way around.

This is about the football world cup, being held so far away in South Africa (unless you were lucky enough to either win a ticket for a game of have enough money that you’re using up your family’s inheritance) and almost nearing its end.

This means that for those of you who have sat through all sixty matches so far, the so called expert panel’s cumbersome views and any re-runs of matches, time is going to be spare again soon.

You may also have sat through the whole of Wimbledon which would have accounted for the rest of your life over the past two weeks just as the football eased off a little.

So what to do with the next few weeks before the football season starts again?

Presuming that you’ve allowed a little time before going on the annual holiday to places far away, this is also the time to take an hour or two to plan your finances, to look over your estate planning and to double check that your will writing and other legal documentation is still up to date.

If you say ‘what paperwork’ then you should contact a qualified professional quickly to start the process. They’ll let you know what you should be thinking about and meet with you very soon.

If you have already set the ‘wheels’ in motion before’ then you’ll have copies of your paperwork handy, because the originals will be in safe storage so they don’t get lost, burnt, stolen or destroyed by other relatives.

You should see if the people named are still relevant – have any died, moved away or changed their status (got married, divorced etc)? You need to check the amount of money and personal items, property etc to see if their value has increased, reduced or stayed the same. Have you change the items on your previous list?

If you find that significant changes need to be made then contact your professional adviser so he or she can visit you to discuss your suggestions and to update your documents.

Finally, make a diary entry to carry out this task on a regular basis, perhaps once or twice a year depending on the makeup of your estate, finances and health. Perhaps consider the sporting calendar so you know you’ve time to miss the next football competition, any cricket tests, tennis, the formula one circuit or whatever sports you follow. After all, it’s always great to find a real balance between living now and planning for the future, but never during a cup final.

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This would be a welcoming sign among many families, but it’s also an unwelcome indication among many other families. It all depends upon how the children get on with the new step-mother.

Leo Abse died in 2008, aged 91. The first point is that he’s regarded as being of sound mind when he updated his will when he last got married because he was writing a detailed book at the time of his death: a biography of Robinson Crusoe author Daniel Defoe.

Leo Abse was also a former Labour member of parliament MP and was married for 40 years to his first wife, Mar¬jorie, an artist. She died in 1996.

When he was 83, he married again, to a lady 50 years his junior, 33 year old Ania Czepulkowska.

The family now has a feud going on, because the testator (the person who died) left almost all of his estate to his second wife and almost nothing to his two children. He left nothing to his grandchildren. The children are obviously worried that everything that was in his father’s estate may now leave the family line.

These types of legal challenges always cause a considerable amount of distress, but it would appear that the testator has left his estate to whom he chose and in the amount he also chose. There wouldn’t appear much that the two children can do about this happening; especially as they can’t afford fees of £200 per hour to fight a legal case.

Probate records show that Leo Abse, MP for Pontypool from 1958 to 1983, and then Torfaen from 1983 to 1987, left £1,164,271.

The will stated that the man’s daughter, who is married to an Italian government official, should receive two of her mother’s framed tapestries. His son was left the two remaining tapestries, plus his father’s pocket watch and a photo of his great-great-grandfather.

Mrs Czepulkowska-Abse could choose 300 books from the house’s library for herself. The son could then receive the rest of the books.

Small legacies totalling £8,500 were left to friends and organisations, including two Welsh male voice choirs.

This shows how important it is to have testators write wills that they are content with and professional will writers have a duty to point out potential problems (like this family dispute) in those decisions; but it is the testator who gets to choose; no-one else, however much that harms the family’s values and ethics.

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The Chancellor George Osborne has delivered the Conservative/Lib Dem government’s first Budget. How will this affect your estate and your will writing planning for the future?

Firstly, let’s look at some major changes from today’s budget:

The main impact upon the UK public will be that from January 4th 2011, VAT will go up to 20%. Current zero rated items will remain at 0%. This will have an enormous impact as people spend (particularly on large ticket items) before the deadline, so Christmas will be a bumper season.

For companies, corporation tax will go lower to 27% and keep going down 1% per annum until it reaches 24%, so companies will make more profits while individuals pay more tax.

The dreaded Capital Gains Tax stays at 18% for low and middle-income savers but from tomorrow, higher rate taxpayers will pay 28%.

The government’s aim is to bring current borrowing at around 10% of GDP down to just over 1% this next year and they intend to wipe out the majority of UK (government) debt problems within five years.

They say inflation will be around 2%, which is still less than most savings accounts pay. Another claim is that unemployment will fall by around 40%.

If you work for the government you can expect a two year pay freeze unless your salary is under £21,000 per annum; then you’ll get a £250 rise both years.

The government will hurry the increase in state pension age to 66.

Child benefit will be frozen for the next three years and Tax credits will be reduced for families earning over £40,000 next year.

Without knowing the full rules yet, the government will introduce a medical assessment for Disability Living Allowance from 2013 for new and existing claimants.

Looking for good news, from April 2011, the threshold at which employers start to pay National Insurance will rise by £21 per week, above indexation. Surprisingly, cigarettes, alcohol and fuel will not change in terms of tax.

A bank levy is being introduced to tax the banks. Unfortunately we all know this means that banks will charge this on to their customers so the public will pay the bill.

The Budget is “tough but fair”, he said.

The UK will not join the euro in this Parliament, and the euro preparation unit in the Treasury will be disbanded.

To sum up, the government are planning to be tough over the next five years, by giving some money back in terms of NI and taxation, but then taking away (probably more) in VAT. If it’s for the long term good, then the UK public will accept it because it was quite obvious to all but the previous chancellor and prime minister, that the labour government were taking the UK down the financial disaster route. This perhaps makes these new changes more palatable.

So how does this affect your will? Make sure you update your personal financial situation on a regular basis and talk to your will writing professional to see if your will needs updating. Everyone’s situation is different, but it appears that we will all be better off over the next few years except for the VAT hike, which once up, will probably never come down again. If they do start to balance the debts, inflation and unemployment, then the stock market will probably be a good investment again, maybe, if, could be etc.

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I met an elderly lady the other day. She asked me what I did and when I told her she very proudly declared that both she and her husband had made wills just a few years ago.

I asked her if she checked them regularly to see if they needed updating in any way. The reply went from bad to worse.

She told me that her husband had died almost a year ago to the day. I offered her my sympathy of course, but she hadn’t finished.

She further told me that after her husband died, they could find his last will and testament. They had put it somewhere safe in their home, but they couldn’t remember where. Many members of their family had searched for it over the next two months but it couldn’t be located.

Therefore, as she now knew, her husband had therefore died intestate – the same as not having a will. This was causing a lot of problems within the family because the estate was quite sizeable (she hinted to over £1 million) and several people thought they should have a share. The only problem with this was the house was worth almost all of the value of the estate with just a handful of thousands in the bank, hardly enough to meet the bills. She was worried she might have to sell up, not to find money to meet the bills, but to pay off distant relatives, having lived there for 52 years.

As there wasn’t a will, she had been forced to go down the letters of administration route, carefully guided by the local authority’s registrar’s office. This has meant long delays and no sign of an outcome yet as those relations ‘not playing ball’ were putting in objections and then late in answering letters. The lady herself thought she was too old to be doing this herself, but wondered about family ‘help’ motivations. She said she owed it to her husband to ensure she did the work herself.

I asked her about her own will. She said it was with her husband’s will!

After pointing out the obvious she’s agreed to have her will written again now and it’ll be kept safely in the company’s safe deposit system. Fireproof, bomb proof and essentially, also water proof.

She’s be able to update it when she wants to if the need arises and she’ll let her family know where it is. If the first one ever comes to light it won’t be valid because the second (new) will will say that the old one is no longer valid. The only worry is that if her first will is found, it probably means her late husband’s will will also be found and that means the letters of administration process may need to be stopped, or if they’ve been completed, then they’ll need comparing, but it will be too late to change anything, then.

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Aneira Thomas, was the first patient of the newly formed NHS – the great institution we all use on a regular basis – 61 years ago. She was born one minute after the NHS started. She even grew up to work for the NHS as a nurse.

Now, however, she may have to sell her house to pay for health care and says her belief in the system has been ‘betrayed’ by the current social care system. She has to meet a £50,000 invoice for the care of her elderly relatives.

She claims the care her parents-on-law received was ‘shocking.’ Hilda Thomas, her mother-in-law, suffered from Alzheimer’s disease. She claims that money and jewellry went missing from the care home in Wales. Both the mother-in-law and her husband died in 2005, but Mrs Thomas was so short of cash she had to pay for their funerals by using her credit card.

Mrs Thomas said: ‘Their appearance changed from a proud and elegant pair to dishevelled, confused and unkempt during their time in the care home. It was tragic to see it happen.

Mrs Thomas’ husband died of a stroke in 2007. She says that when the parents-in-law moved into the care home funding would be provided for the couple. This didn’t happen and now the local authority/the care home want her to settle the £48,750 bill.

Mrs Thomas said: ‘The only way I could pay the bill is to sell my own house.

‘I have applied for retrospective funding with the local health board but have been waiting for more than three years. It’s been a huge strain.’

If you want to plan for care home fees, then speak ASAP with a professional who may be able to plan your estate and finances with you, so that this type of situation doesn’t happen to you.

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