Without a Will, the spouse would get £250,000 plus a life interest in £237,500, the children would get £237,500, and from the spouse and children’s share the Taxman would get £18,000.

To enable the estate to be split in this way, the family home would probably have to be sold. There are absolutely no benefits at all to not having a Will, and there are numerous disadvantages.

1. Your next of kin sometimes won’t know if you have made a Will or not, and will spend time searching for one.

2. When they don’t find your Will, they’ll then have to apply to the courts for the power to deal with your estate (assuming it’s worth more than £5,000). This takes a lot longer than the simple process of ‘Applying for Probate’ – which is what happens when you have written a Will.

3. In the meanwhile, they’ll have to pay your funeral expenses and (in almost all cases, due to the significant extra delay) pay any Inheritance tax due before they’ve gained access to your

4. If you have any children and haven’t appointed Guardians for them (and their mother isn’t alive), your next of kin will have to sort that out as well – again by going through the courts (which can be a costly and time-consuming process).

5. When they finally have access to all of your Estate, it is distributed according to the Laws of Intestacy which in most cases will not be what you want – and any special gifts you wanted to make will be ignored.