A codicil is an add-on chapter. If you write a will and you decide at a later stage; I’d like to make a gift to my friend, I want to leave them £1000, you don’t have to rewrite the whole will.
You can leave the will as it is and a codicil says: this is an add-on chapter to my existing will. So the codicil is only for an existing will and that’s when you can make the alterations.
But most frequently chosen Codicil subjects are an extra legacy or to say Í want to change my executors’.
Because there are a lot of people out there who have family exectutors; they’ve chosen their children or they’ve chosen their spouses. One of the things I was saying before is if you go for professional executors you don’t have that problem for inheritance tax and there are practical considerations as well.
If you’ve got a spouse as your only executor and you die, the last thing your spouse wants to do as soon as you’ve died is to start dealing with the complicated paperwork of dealing with an estate. They want to be able to say ‘deal with it’.
That’s what you can do with professional executors.
Beneficiaries have the complete right to know all the ins and outs of the finances during the estate. The executors must give, to beneficiaries, a complete account of every penny in and every penny out. So they will see what’s being spent & why, and they have plenty of legal chances and opportunities and rules to say they’re allowed to to question it, ask questions, have more details or see why certain decisions are being made.
That’s not a problem. But instead of lumbering a wife or children with that, you have carte blanche to do it.
