The false economy of a cheap will: where £20 will kits go wrong (and when a simple will really is enough)

There is no shortage of cheap wills available in the UK. High-street kits, online template services, and even free wills offered through charity schemes promise a valid will in minutes. For some people, they genuinely produce what is needed. For others, they produce a piece of paper that goes very wrong twenty years later.

This is not an argument that everyone needs a complex will. Most people do not. The question is whether the will you end up with does what you actually want it to do.

What you get for £20 to £100

At the bottom of the market, a will kit gives you a fill-in-the-blanks template, basic instructions, and the legal requirement that the will be properly signed and witnessed. The cost reflects what is involved: there is no individual advice, no review of your circumstances, and no assurance that the result reflects your specific situation.

Online template services sit slightly above that, often with a guided questionnaire that produces a more tailored document. Some of these are well-built; others are alarmingly thin.

Most will-writing companies and high-street solicitors charge between £150 and £500 for a single will, with packages for couples or for wills bundled with LPAs. Specialist estate planning firms charge more, typically reflecting the time spent on advice rather than the document itself.

How DIY wills go wrong

The legal requirements for a valid will are strict. A will can fail entirely if it is not properly executed. The most common DIY mistakes are:

• Witnessing errors. The witnesses must be present at the same time when the testator signs, and must sign in the testator's presence. A signature added later is not valid.
• Beneficiary witnesses. A witness who benefits under the will, or whose spouse benefits, loses their gift. The will is otherwise valid; the gift is voided.
• Ambiguous gifts. 'My jewellery to my daughter' is fine if you have one daughter. With two, it is not. 'My grandchildren' depends on which grandchildren existed at the date of the will and the date of death.
• Forgotten residue clauses. Many DIY wills carefully describe specific gifts and forget to say what happens to the rest of the estate. Anything not specifically gifted falls under the intestacy rules.
• Out-of-date forms. Templates printed before a legal change may produce wills that look right but conflict with current rules, particularly on excluded clauses or trust language.
• Marriage revocation. In England and Wales, marrying revokes any earlier will unless it was made in contemplation of that specific marriage. A DIY will written before a marriage and not refreshed is no will at all.

These mistakes are not caught by the kit. They are caught after death, by the family, when nothing can be done.

Where cheap wills fail by design

Even a properly executed cheap will may fail to achieve what the testator actually wanted. The will is technically valid; it just does the wrong thing.

Trusts

If you want to leave assets in trust for grandchildren until they are 25, or to a vulnerable adult on a discretionary basis, a template will is unlikely to handle that well. Trust drafting is the part of will-writing where small errors produce big consequences. A clause that does not properly create a trust may leave a beneficiary receiving a lump sum at 18 instead.

Blended families

Second marriages with children from a first relationship are the most common contentious-will scenario. A template will, with no thought given to the dynamic, often produces an outcome that hurts one side of the family. Life interest trusts and other structures that work for blended families need specialist drafting.

Inheritance tax

A will is the start of estate planning, not the end of it. Wills that do not consider the inheritance tax thresholds, the residence nil-rate band, charitable gifting at 10% to reduce the rate from 40% to 36%, and the interaction with lifetime gifts and trusts, can leave significant tax on the table. A simple will alone is not an inheritance tax plan.

Guardians for minor children

A template will lets you name guardians but typically does not separate the guardian role from the trustee role, and rarely contains a trust to defer the inheritance beyond 18. Where these matter, they need to be drafted properly.

A twenty-years-later example

A couple in their thirties draft DIY wills leaving everything to the survivor and then equally to their two children. They name no guardians. They include no trust. They never review the wills.

Twenty-three years later, one of them dies. The will, technically valid, leaves the estate to the survivor. The survivor remarries within three years. The remarriage, in England and Wales, automatically revokes the existing will. The survivor never gets round to making a new one.

The survivor dies eight years later, intestate. Under the intestacy rules, the second spouse takes the first £322,000 plus all personal possessions plus half of the rest. The two children share the other half between them, alongside any children the survivor and second spouse had together.

The two original children, the intended beneficiaries of the original plan, may receive significantly less than their parents intended, possibly after litigation with their step-parent. The cost of the original DIY wills was about £40. The cost of the legal fees on the disputed estate is in the tens of thousands.

When a simple will really is enough

This is not an argument that everyone needs a complex will. Many people genuinely do not.

A simple will, drafted carefully, may be all you need if:

• You are single or married, with no children from a previous relationship
• Your estate is below the inheritance tax threshold including any pension to be passed on after April 2027
• You are leaving everything either to your spouse or split equally between adult children
• You do not need to defer the inheritance beyond 18
• You do not have a business, foreign property, or any significant non-standard assets
• You are willing to revisit the will every five years and after any life event

For everyone else, the difference between a cheap will and a well-drafted one tends to be invisible at the time of writing and very visible at the time of death.

The honest test

Ask yourself: if you died tomorrow, would the people you trust to read your will be able to explain to a court, your family, and HMRC what you wanted and why? If yes, a simple will is probably fine. If the answer is unclear, the saving on a cheap will is rarely worth it.

Simply Estate is an estate planning firm. Our team will tell you honestly whether a simple will is enough for your situation, or whether you need something more. Visit our will writing page to get started.